


Don't Go Too Far

by ALOrated



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: (Technically it is!), (Technically! I swear!), Alexander Hamilton Has A Near Death Experience, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Cabin Fic, Canada, For some reason that was a suggested tag?, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Not Canon Compliant, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Snowed In, Survival Horror, The Long Dark but it's Hamilton, Wilderness Survival
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:41:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 24,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22625743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ALOrated/pseuds/ALOrated
Summary: Alexander wakes up, body numb from the cold and blood staining his jacket. The northern lights glow above him, more beautiful than they've ever been before.He's alone, wreckage from the plane crash scattered around him, an inch away from death.It was supposed to be an all expenses paid trip to Great Bear Island, Canada -- a land of pristine lakes, snowy mountaintops, and cozy cabins. Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison, accompanied by a hired bush pilot, would scout out the local industry and report back to Washington in New York after it was all said and done.It was supposed to be a vacation, until everything went wrong. But when things are at their worst, people find themselves growing the closest together.A Lams/Jeffmads-centric fic built around relationships growing and characters learning more about one another set during the Quiet Apocalypse, where it will take everything they have within them to survive until they can find rescue.
Relationships: Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens, Thomas Jefferson/James Madison
Comments: 61
Kudos: 109





	1. Memories

Alexander groaned, a horrible pounding spreading throughout his skull. He blinked, trying to focus on his surroundings through frozen eyelashes, wind whipping a thin layer of snow over his exposed face. It no longer felt cold -- rather, it burned and stung, making him sharply inhale a gasp of icy air.

The world around him came into focus. His back was pressed against the snow, and when he shifted one arm to push himself up, a startling pain shocked through his core that made him hiss through his teeth and collapse once more.

The sky above was black and blue and swirling with lights. A word came to him: _aurora._ Then, another thought, this time not a word but a phrase: _I’m going to die out here._

The aurora was so beautiful, stronger and brighter than he’d ever imagined the northern lights could ever be. It drowned out the stars in the sky, appearing like a ribbon formed from shimmering emerald jewels. He’d never seen an aurora before; it was his first time being so far north.

Shame this would be his last time, too.

He shut his eyes, wondering all the while how he could have been so stupid as to get on that plane.

* * *

Only a few hours earlier, and Alexander was leaning against the car door, the glass uncomfortably cool against his cheek. He was sitting in the back driver’s side seat; James had the front passenger seat, and Jefferson was driving.

Quite frankly, he wasn’t sure he trusted Jefferson being the driver in such icy conditions, but since Jefferson was the one who got the rental car in the first place, he couldn’t exactly complain about that. He could, however, complain about _everything else_.

“I can’t believe Washington is sending us to bumfuck nowhere Canada,” he groaned, messing with his jacket sleeve. “I was planning to do so much more this month than travel across the fucking continent to scout out a place that’s barely more than a couple of off-the-grid-wackos, a handful of mines, and a dam.” Grumbling, he added, “ _Burr_ got out of this shit, why not me?”

He truly, passionately, hated travelling. First, they got to deal with the traffic just _getting_ to the airport (JFK was a nightmare even on a good day, in his opinion). That was all fun and games compared to what came next, though -- between time spent just sitting there waiting for their plane to take off (listening to Thomas complain all the while about legroom -- the guy was six-foot-something, and by far the tallest of their little ontourage, but that didn’t mean Alexander _wanted_ to hear all that) and the flight itself, they spent _six hours_ on that plane.

Oh, but that was only to get to Vancouver International Airport! Which was apparently in some place called “Richmond,” which apparently also happened to be the name of the state capital of Virginia, because James and Thomas _wouldn’t shut up about it_. At least dealing with passports and the likes wasn’t so terrible, and they had the chance to grab a bite to eat, but after another bout of waiting, and another round of sitting and waiting to take off for half an hour, they still had a good two-and-a-half hours on the air before arriving in Yukon (specifically, “Erik Nielsen Whitehorse International Airport.” What a mouthful of a name).

Oh, but that wasn’t the end of it! They still had to get a rental car and drive even _further_ out from there, because apparently Washington could only find a single bush pilot willing to take them out to where they were going: Great Bear Island, off the coast of Yukon, Canada.

If you can only find one pilot of questionable quality who’s willing to fly you, shouldn’t that be a hint that it’s in your best interests not to go at all? Especially considering there was a forecast of wild weather and a killer cold snap coming up.

Apparently, the place they were heading had experienced a fair bit of tourism in the past (being an island, tourists could come by ship from the coast, but Alexander and his cohorts didn’t have that liberty), and as such, Washington had arranged a decently place for them to stay at their destination, some sort of rental cabin situation. After spending the better part of 24 travelling (and that was without counting the final leg of their journey), Alexander knew he was damn well looking forward to crawling into bed that night.

“I agree that surely he could have found another group more qualified,” Madison began in reply to Alexander’s comment, “but if nothing else, you can think of it as a paid vacation. It’s a quick trip, too -- fly out there, spend a few nights, and the same guy picks us up again. Then we all get to go home.”

“I heard Great Bear has excellent fishing, especially during the summer months,” Thomas idly commented.

“Hunting, too,” James added. Alexander glared at the back of Thomas’ head, hoping he’d against all odds be able to burn a hole right through the man’s skull with just a look. At this point, the two Virginians were ganging up on him!

“Well, this time of the year, all I think we’ve got to expect is snow and ice,” Alexander grumbled, sinking back into his seat. He had hardly any legroom, on account of Thomas sliding his seat back as far as it could go. He had been _planning_ to sit behind James, but apparently “someone” had had the bright idea to stack their luggage on that side of the backseat. “I don’t even like New York’s weather, forget northern Canada!”

“Well, we’re almost there, so suck it up, buttercup,” Thomas drawled, clearly unimpressed with Alexander’s whining. “Jemmy, can you keep an eye out for this guy’s place? Should be a sign for, uh...”

“Jackrabbit Remote Transport,” Madison supplied. “Run by a Mr. Jack L.” He snorted. “Fun little pun there, come to think of it.”

Alexander shifted slightly at that name, but didn’t think much of it, outside of noting it sounded vaguely familiar. He really wished he had worn more layers; he was far happier in 80-degree weather than the single-digit numbers reported for where they were heading. In Celsius (which he didn’t know how to read -- although of _course_ Jefferson did, and the man was happy to rub his “scientific knowledge” in Alexander’s face), that temperature translated to “way too goddamn cold.” At least he was smart enough to have more clothing in his suitcase; he wasn’t so dumb as to depart for a remote island in Canada without quite a few layers that were up to the very important task of keeping him from freezing to death.

James pointed out the sign, and they pulled into the driveway leading up to the building. Apparently, temperatures got so extreme up here that they’d need to park their rental car inside lest it suffer some...unfortunate effects from being frozen solid for a couple of days straight; fortunately, that was part of their contract with this “Jack L.,” with the man providing a space in his garage to park the car until they had to drive back to Whitehorse.

Alexander glanced over at the sign as Thomas pulled into a parking space; they’d move the car once their bags were unloaded and secured in the plane. Jackrabbit Remote Transport’s logo was (fittingly) a brown rabbit leaping across a yellow circle, a lighter, smaller circle resembling the sun behind the rabbit’s torso. It was upbeat, cozy, quite unlike the weather outside currently.

He gritted his teeth against the cold as they hopped out of the car, trudging through the snow already present on the ground to head towards the small door that must have led to the aircraft hangar. Thomas raised one hand as if to knock, before deciding that considering this was a business, there’d probably be some sort of office inside to check in with instead. So, he grabbed the door handle and pulled, the latch sticking for a moment before letting them in.

Once inside, Alexander kicked the door shut behind them all and rubbed at his arms, glancing around. It was a decent sized room, which was to be expected, considering it was accommodating an _airplane_ \-- the one here was dark yellow and brown with the logo painted on the side and floats mounted under the fuselage. Beyond that, the walls were mostly covered with cargo and basic living supplies -- he noticed a small kitchenette area set up with a hotplate and all, a restroom, a few posters here and there...it was nice, he had to admit.

Then, their would-be bush pilot stepped out of what must have been his office, and Alexander saw him.

A man he thought had died nearly a decade ago.

Jack L.

Or should he say, John Laurens.

John staggered in his step, and Alexander swallowed thickly, stepping back and covering his mouth to suppress his horrified gasp. John’s expression mimicked Alexander’s -- shocked, eyes wide -- before the pilot plastered a smile on his face and walked over to them, slapping one hand to the nose of his aircraft. “So-o,” John started, and his voice cracked to the extent that he swallowed thickly and shut himself up again, took a deep breath, and then started over, “I’ll be flyin’ you three out to Great Bear today?”

“Mnhm,” Thomas replied, seemingly oblivious to the tense situation. “That’d be right.”

“Well, I’m pleased to know it’s me who’ll be flyin’ ya out, considering the weather’s gonna be getting pretty nasty soon enough. But once we’re flyin’ over Great Bear, the skies’ll clear up real nice,” John managed through gritted teeth, rapping his knuckles against the side of his plane and forcibly maintaining his pleasant look. “Been flyin’ this girl for six years now, running cargo and passengers to Great Bear and other remote areas of Canada. Good ol’ de Havilland Beaver, ‘bout the best bush plane you can get for the job, and-”

Alexander couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bear to stand here listening to that man drone on. Fingernails digging into his palms, he quickly spat, “Auh, I, um, left my phone in the car!” before turning tail and running back out of the hangar.

In the background, he heard Thomas idly comment, “He’s aware there’s no cell reception where we’re goin’ anyway, right?”

Alexander slammed the door behind him, cold wind licking his face.

This was going to be even rougher than he had anticipated.

* * *

Oh, yes. He should never have gotten on that plane.

John had loaded their bags onto the plane and had gone over basic safety, all that fun stuff, before they took off. All the while, it felt like he was carefully avoiding meeting Alexander’s gaze, and while Madison was his usual soft-spoken self, Thomas seemed fascinated by it all.

Alexander decided that that was the one good thing Thomas had done so far this trip: Thomas was always so obsessed with being the smartest and most eager to learn in the room that the guy was actually managing to distract John and Alex from the real situation at hand.

Although that didn’t mean that he wasn’t trying to figure out how to mute his aviation headset after they took off. In fact, by the time they were over Great Bear Island itself, he was almost considering strangling Thomas.

“Wow, this place sure has a helluva lotta mountains,” Thomas commented, staring outside. As John had promised, the wind and clouds had cleared as they left the mainland, and outside of loose flurries, the sky was bright and sparkling with stars. “What’s the tallest one here?”

“Uh...Timberwolf Mountain, I believe,” John replied. “Gets real cold there, though, and after a plane crashed there a couple months ago very few hikers try to summit the thing anymore.”

“Wasn’t there an earthquake a few years back, too?” James asked.

“Yup. Place isn’t in great condition, hence why you’ve got guys like me running supplies,” John chuckled. Alexander crossed his arms and glared out the window. Now it wasn’t just that they were going to the middle of nowhere; it was also a place riddled with natural disasters!

“All the more reason why we need to be here,” Alexander grumbled sarcastically, staring out at the sky around them as they flew. There was almost a silvery haze out on the horizon, and as he watched, it seemed to condense, glow in hue and color. He tipped his head. “Hold on, guys, shut up for a second. What’s outside?”

“Mn?” John seemed to need a moment to process what he was looking at, before replying, “Oh, it’s the northern lights. I heard they were forecast; didn’t expect them to come on this quick, though.”

“They’re pretty,” James commented.

They were beautiful.

And they became stronger, more vibrant, brilliant greens and purples drowning out the landscape.

And then, there was a flash of light, and John aplty squeaked, “Shit.” He tapped at one of the glass-covered dials mounted before him. “The- something’s wrong, all my instruments are malfunctioning...whole electrical system’s fried.”

Alexander could smell smoke, and the cockpit was illuminated with sparks.

There was a look in John’s eyes, one Alexander recognized from their time together in the military all those years ago. Before John had disappeared, before John had been declared dead.

It was a deadpan look, one that was cold, expressionless. When things were at their worst, and he became cool, commanding, stoic.

“Uh, what does that mean!?” James leaned out of his seat.

“It means sit your ass down unless you want to be ejected from the cockpit,” John growled, gripping the yoke so hard his knuckles turned white. “No power means we’re going down -- just hold tight!”

Flashes of light and darkness.

The slopes of the rugged mountain peaks around them.

Trees, stretching all the way to the sky, before abruptly, they were crashing through trunks and rocks and Alexander felt John’s hand entwine with his as they screamed-

A flash of pain, and he blacked out, suddenly feeling weightless.

* * *

Hands gripping his shoulders, shaking him awake, brought him back to the present with a start. He forced his eyes open, as much as they wanted to stay shut, and for a moment, he thought it was a monster come to rip his soul to hell that stood above him.

Then, his gaze focused, and he realized it was John -- he was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, leaving his face painted red and half-unrecognizable.

Then, the other man’s voice faded back in, and he heard John crying, “Alex! Goddammit, get up, we can’t stay out here for long!”

“John…?” he mumbled, feeling the other man pull him up to a sitting position. He hissed as he was jostled, but was now up, awake, and perfectly aware of the situation they were in.

The smell of burning gasoline filled his nostrils. Above him, cliff walls stretched into the sky, Thomas and James were nowhere to be found, and it was cold outside, and getting colder.

He was cold, injured, and in pain. He may have survived the initial crash, but for how long would that last?


	2. The Crash (Part 1)

When the temperatures fall low enough, there’s a certain sort of cold that goes from uncomfortable to painful. You still feel your warmth seeping away, cold creeping in, but there’s something extra there, too. Everything burns with cold, the very air is a slap to the face and to the lungs; every thought boils down to: I want out of this frozen hellscape.

As a child, Alexander never thought much of the cold. To him, cold was momentary; it was sitting on cool rock in the shade, opening a fridge and feeling a refreshing burst of air from the sticky heat outside, or opening the windows on one of the few days a year the weather was a little chillier than usual. Nothing that lasted. Even after moving to New York, the weather was cool, but when it snowed, he could always choose instead to stay indoors with the heater turned up high. Now, on the other hand, the cold seeped into his bones and stung his skin, and it felt like it would never end.

John was by his side, and the man moved to pull Alexander to his feet; Alex gasped in pain as the other man went to grab his injured hand. Seeming to get the memo, John switched over, grabbing Alex’s uninjured wrist and hauling him to his feet.

Alexander wobbled on his feet, head pounding with a heavy feeling settling over his skull, steadied only as John put one hand between his shoulder blades. “We have to find shelter; it’s _freezing_ out here.”

The wind whipped at Alex’s hair; his hair elastic must have been ripped out with their crash. Smoke filled his nose, and he coughed, the jerking movement sending a new wave of pain down his spine. John looked around, lightly touching his free hand to the cut on his scalp and wincing, before turning to try and get a better reading on the area. “There!” he shouted a few moments later, pointing to a small depression in the rock. “Looks like a cave, or an overhang, or somethin’. Anything to get us out of the wind.”

He pushed Alexander towards the cliffside, and sure enough, the snow dipped away to reveal solid stone. There was a cave, of sorts, the ground littered with old prey bones and twigs and stones. It wasn’t very deep, only going far enough to offer them some shelter from the wind, but it was enough. It _had_ to be enough.

Alexander staggered and dropped to his knees once inside, breath forming thick clouds in the air. “Where’re James and Thomas?” he rasped, and John spread his arms, unable to gather a response.

“I don’t know where they are- and in this weather, we’re not going to be able to find them.” When Alexander shuffled to push himself back to his feet, John pressed him down again. “Just- goddammit, Alex, sit the fuck down and _stay there_ before you collapse. You go looking for them, you’re dead.” He turned to face the cave’s exit. “Temperatures out there are in the negatives -- that’s for both Fahrenheit and Celcious, before you start acting like a smart-ass -- and I have no clue how long it’d take us to climb outta this ravine and hike to the nearest town. Fuck, with the wind pickin’ up and the aurora dyin’ down, we can barely see at all.” He rubbed at his arms, shivering. “We need to get a fire going and try to hunker down, at least until the wind isn’t so harsh. I’d much rather we didn’t get frostbite and _die_ before the night’s over.”

“Alright survivorman, and how the hell’re we gonna manage that?” Alexander hissed, his gaze glancing to the wound on John’s scalp. “Plus, your head is-”

“I _t’s fine_ ,” John snapped back, then squinted, scouring the dark landscape around the entrance to the cave. “Plane was required to carry survival equipment by Canadian regulation, and it looks like half the ravine is covered in wreckage ‘n shit. If I can find any of that, our chances of survival go from nothin’ to at least entertaining that we’ll get outta this. Now, I’ll be right back.”

That didn’t make Alex feel much better.

John left.

The aurora outside had died away before John returned, shouting “I found some of it!”, falling to his knees by the mouth of the cave to at least have a little light illuminating his things as he worked. “I always keep at least part of the emergency kit up in the front of the cockpit with me instead of with the cargo, just ‘cause it’s got some stuff in it I sometimes want on hand; it must’ve been ejected out the front with us.” First and foremost, to illustrate his point, he pulled out a flashlight -- but when he clicked it on...nothing.

“What the- I checked the flashlight this _morning_ , even changed the batteries- I don’t understand why it isn’t...working...” he mumbled aloud, before suddenly throwing it aside. “Dammit! Just our luck, huh? First the fucking plane, next the flashlight.” He glanced up, eyes meeting Alex’s gaze. “So, you still bouta keel over from a concussion?”

“I think you’re in worse shape than I am!” Alexander refuted, ignoring how he still cradled his injured hand to his chest. At least the cold was starting to leave that hand without feeling.

“Awesome. Firewood, now.” John jerked his chin near the cave’s entrance. “Looks like that crash obliterated the trees on the cliffside; wood chips are scattered everywhere.” In the meantime, he ripped open the small pack he had dragged over, digging through its contents and a moment later holding up a lighter -- the case a fluorescent orange that practically glowed in the dark.

Minutes later, and they had a fire going. John’s lighter was part of a kit with waterproof tinder -- a lucky fact for them, considering how hard it would have been to light otherwise in the cold and dampness.

And as John crouched to blow on the small flame and encourage it to grow just a little faster, Alexander had his uninjured hand cupped to his ear, listening. He heard nothing but the wind, cutting and howling and horribly loud, despite being shielded by the walls of the cave. Even when he was outside of the cave collecting wood, he had tried to get the best look at the hills above the cliffs that he could, and could hardly even tell where the plane had crashed, let alone look for survivors -- the angle was just bad, it was dark, and they were too far below. “Nothing.” He turned to John. “What if they’re _dead?_ ”

“Could be worse ways to go,” John gruffly replied, and Alexander was hit with a newfound pang of heartache. Before their relationship had soured, John was always...so kind. Sure, he could be aggressive to others, and impulsive, and rough -- but that came with being in the military. When they were alone, in their moments of downtime, he was always sweet, and understanding, and while he teased Alex, he wasn’t cruel.

But just now, Alexander had expressed his worries that his coworkers were _dead_ , and John blew him off. Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to restrain himself from a horrible comment if he opened his mouth, he just clenched his teeth and moved over to sit nearer to John. Not necessarily to get closer to the man -- rather, he needed to find what else they had to work with, and didn’t want to stay too far from the fire until they could build it up more. The air around it was a bit warmer than elsewhere, but even crouched beside it, the stone below them seeped away his warmth and did little to ease his shivering. He was at this point rendered clumsy by the cold -- but if nothing else, that helped soothe the pain in his wrist and hand.

He noticed John grab the emergency kit, rummaging through it before pulling out a...water bottle. “My insulated mug was properly chucked right to Hell when we crashed,” John flatly explained. “‘Least you can use this shit to boil water in an emergency -- we’re gonna need it. Even if we found the water bottles I had stashed in the plane, they’d be frozen by the time we got to them.”

Alexander didn’t respond, but pulled the emergency bag over -- it was a drawstring in a fluorescent tone similar to that of the lighter -- and turned it over, dumping everything out. “John.”

“What?” the other man replied. He sounded exasperated, exhausted.

“Let me take care of your head.”

After a short pause, John complied, turning to face Alexander, but then frowned. “Your arm’s still fucked up.”

“Ah- yeah,” Alexander admitted, cradling his wrist. One of the twigs suddenly caught and burst alight, bathing them in a temporary wash of orange; John took the chance to take Alex’s hand in his own, carefully examining it.

That, at least, reminded him of the old John.

“It doesn’t look like anything went through the skin, at least,” John finally concluded. “I don’t _think_ it’s broken, just a sprain...but I can’t say for sure.” He turned to the bag, sighing when he saw all the supplies had been dumped out, before finding a little, pocket-size medical kit and zipping it open. “Let’s wrap it and...” he glanced back outside. “Ice it, I guess, though until the fire builds up we won’t have to make much effort there. Still, best to keep it from getting strained worse. If we’re gonna hike to civilization, we’ll probably have to climb outta this ravine once the weather breaks, and with your hand...”

“Right,” Alexander sighed.

“Any other injuries?”

Alexander took stock of himself as John fumbled for a compression bandage and started gently wrapping Alex’s hand. The fire was starting to grow a bit faster, casting a better bit of light over the cave, and when he looked down at his body, he was dirty and scuffed. He had been wearing what he thought before taking off would be considered reasonable -- warm but loose pants, a nicer sweater (just to give a small semblance of professionalism), boots, and a jacket that was marketed as some kind of cold-weather ski jacket, but seemed to barely function as a windbreaker right at that moment (John, in comparison, at least seemed more prepared). But for Alex, his pants were ripped, and his face was scuffed, and bruises would no doubt soon litter his skin. His head, at least, was no longer pounding -- he hadn’t been totally knocked out in the crash, only hit down hard, so at least if he did have a concussion...well, it could have been worse, right? A mild injury was better than severe brain damage.

John seemed to have taken the brunt of the impact with the front windshield; his coat was ripped and, of course, there was the cut on his forehead -- but if nothing else, the blood appeared to have dried and the bleeding stopped, albeit with a good chunk of his face hidden behind a veil of dark red.

Still, considering what had happened...they were lucky. _Very, very lucky._ The impact of the crash must have shattered the cockpit’s windshield before he and John were thrown through it, and as they both had a few layers on and had ducked just before the crash, by some miracle they hadn’t been too cut up by the glass. Then, considering he couldn’t see where the plane had ended up...the trees and snow must’ve broken their fall when they were flung into the ravine.

How lucky they were indeed.

And while he didn’t consider himself a good friend of James and Thomas, he still didn’t want them to die, and worriedly once again glanced to the mouth of the cave before turning away. John was right. Especially with Alex’s hand injured, in this weather, it’d be a miracle if he could even get out of the ravine, let alone find them.

Instead, he took the pocket med kit from John and found an antiseptic wipe, tearing open the package and scooting across the cold stone floor. He instructed the other man to angle his head into the light, and slowly he began to clean the wound on John’s scalp.

The fire was beginning to beat away the frozen air. Not enough to truly warm them, but enough to stop the shivers wracking Alex’s body. He was _not_ a cold person.

And once John’s wounds were cleaned and bandaged, he returned to his original task of checking over the emergency kit. “What’ve we got to work with? You mentioned something about regulations-”

“Equipment for starting a fire, providing shelter and water, and some kind of distress signal,” John rattled off. Looking at the contents of the emergency kit, Alexander was going to give John the benefit of the doubt and assume at least some of it was thrown to who-knows-where in the crash. They had a pocketknife, the lighter, the first aid kit. Some duct-tape. Cord. A broken flashlight. Not much to work with.

John rattled on, seemingly oblivious to Alex anxiously mulling over their options. No food, no water, beyond John’s drink container, which they could use to melt snow. “Vague, yeah...and I honestly never gave it much thought, because I didn’t think I’d ever have to use it, ‘n just had the emergency kit mostly as backups for other shit, like a flashlight, band-aids, whatever. Maybe I’d cut my finger and needed something for it. Shit like that, yeah? Now, I _had_ a flare gun -- no fuckin’ clue what happened to it in the crash. Prob’ly in the same place as my mug.” A startling look of disappointment flashed across his features. “My poor mug. It was a real nice one, too…”

“ _That’s_ what you’re worried about!?” Alexander finally exploded on him. “The fact that James and Thomas could be dead, the fact that we’re hiding in a cave after _crashing_ in the mountains, that we have almost no supplies, all of that? Oh, but that’s no big deal! But your goddamn mug, now _that’s_ something to mourn.” He threw his hands up in the air sarcastically. “Really makes me wonder why I was so surprised to learn that you didn’t _die_ all those years ago, that instead you were...what, that you ran away to Canada? Finally got the life you always wanted, huh? Dicking around with some old airplane you inexplicably own and know to fly, sitting in your hangar when business is slow and drinking in the daytime, abandoning everyone who loved you- must be the perfect life, where your biggest problems are losing a _mug_ and not concerns of anyone other than yourself! _”_ For a moment, the heat in his chest was enough to banish the cold.

John replied with venom in his voice, and the cold quickly returned to Alexander as he realized what he’d gotten himself into now, arguing with John. “Now, you’re just making assumptions. Unlike _some people,_ I don’t turn to smoking and alcohol and whatever other drugs I can get my hands on to make myself feel better. I learned a valued skill and built myself a career -- what exactly have you done? -- and no, I didn’t abandon everyone, Alex. I abandoned _you_ , because considering our relationship was solidly done and over with, I didn’t think it was necessary to hunt you down after you got out of the army and go begging to have you back in my bed. I’m getting upset about my mug because it stops me from putting too much thought into the even worse things we’re facing right now, considering in this state, we can’t do much to fix those ‘even worse things.’” He rubbed at his arms, digging his fingers into his jacket. “If I start worrying, I’m _going_ to panic, and for now, we need to stay calm. You were always the guy who could poker face anything, always got calm under stress -- how about, for just two minutes, you _be_ that guy again?”

Alexander gaped, finally snapping his mouth shut, gritting his teeth, and flatly stating, “For the record, I _did_ build myself a respectable career.” That was why he was here in the first place. All for some stupid career.

“Wow, congrats,” John only sarcastically mumbled in reply, before abruptly pushing himself back to his feet. “Okay, look. If we’re going to get through this, arguing isn’t going to help. Here’s how it’s gonna go -- our past history _does not matter._ All that matters currently is working together well enough to get out. So on the itinerary: I’m going to fill up this bottle with some snow, get some water going. Shouldn’t be hard to find.”

Alexander joined him, fortunate to find that his head no longer radiated pain when he stood. “I’ll try to see about more firewood.” It was cold away from the flames, but if they wanted to last through the night, it would be better to feed it up now. If he could find anything to keep them off the ground, the better, but he wasn’t going to get his hopes up on that one.

“Alright,” John agreed; his earlier anger had leached away from his voice, and he only sounded firm, but thankful. “With luck, the weather’ll clear by morning and we can clamber on out of here. Find our bags, get some extra layers, more supplies. Look for the other guys, I...I guess. Then...” his shoulders slumped slightly. “I don’t think we’re _too_ far from civilization -- based on the course we were flying -- so from there, it’s trying to get to the nearest town, somewhere with power and a way outta here.”

“Right,” Alex echoed, trailing off soon after. “Right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not a fan of the cold. Can you tell?
> 
> John and Alexander have a lot of anger towards each other currently, and considering the extreme circumstances, that's causing them to clash and fight. Issue is, if there's any time at which they should *not* fight, that time is now. Still, they're very lucky -- they escaped the crash with minimal injuries, John was able to find some of his emergency supplies, and they managed to find shelter.
> 
> Let's hope that luck doesn't run out.


	3. The Crash (Part 2)

Thomas shifted in his seat, pain sparking through him. The world around him was bathed in a sickly green light, far brighter than any natural occurrence should have been, but here he was.

Limp in his seat, seatbelt painful against his chest, every breath drawing a wince and a whimper through his lips. He was cold,  _ freezing _ in fact, and the wind whipped through the crashed plane and clawed at his face. He was alone in the plane, hanging at an angle and nearly falling out of his seat. When his fingers fumbled for the latch on his seatbelt and he was released, he fell like a limp ragdoll to the ground, tumbling forward in the snow.

He hissed in pain, pushing himself up first onto his elbows, then to his knees, wildly looking around. He was on some sort of cliff’s edge, the space just behind him tumbling into oblivion below, and the space before him creating a gently-sloping plateau littered with boulders, everything hidden under a thick blanket of snow.

Where was everyone else? The pilot, Alexander... _ Jemmy _ .

There was a dark form limp in the snow some distance before him, and gritting his teeth through the pain in his ribs as he rose to his feet, he hobbled forward toward it, picking up speed as he drew close enough to see the other’s face. It  _ was _ James, and his eyes were open and aware, but he appeared dazed. Gripping the other man by his shoulders, he resisted the urge to scream until his throat was hoarse over the wind, instead shaking James until he groaned and shoved Thomas back.

“Thomas…?” he grunted, pushing himself up.

“James!” he sobbed in return. “James, God- you’re okay-”

“We’ll see,” the other man winced, pushing himself to his knees and staring up at the sky. The green glow of the northern lights reflected in his dark eyes, shining and sparkling. Such a beautiful thing, for such a horrid situation. “What- where’s Alexander and Jack?”

Thomas whipped his gaze around, looking for anyone else across the landscape, but found nothing. “I don’t know,” he admitted, sucking in a sharp breath as another bout of pain rippled through his chest. Splayed into the snow as he was, his legs were soon beginning to cry a similar tune, ice so cold it stung his skin. “They’re not in the plane, I don’t...” He raised a hand to cover his face as a new rush of frozen air tore through them. “God, it’s fucking  _ freezing _ out here; we gotta- we needta get to shelter-” Shoving himself back to his feet, he grabbed James’ outstretched hand and pulled him up after- only for the other man to cry out and collapse to one knee. “James? James, what’s wrong?”

“My leg- I-I can’t put weight on it, I don’t know...” James was gasping, and reached up to cover his mouth as if to stifle himself, hush his frantic breaths.

“Okay,” Thomas swallowed, lips burning. “Okay, that’s okay, I’ll just- I’ll help you up, we’re- we’re gonna be fine.” He knew he rambled when he was scared; he wasn’t the most talkative man most days, at least certainly not in comparison to Hamilton. But if he stopped speaking, he was worried he wouldn’t ever start again. “Come on, get up again, it’ll be alright!” With his encouragement, James rose to his feet once more, favoring his uninjured leg and planting one hand on his shoulder. Standing was a good first step, but they still had to reach the second: walking. Thomas was a fairly tall guy, and worked out from time to time, but he didn’t think he’d be able to get far carrying James, let alone in these conditions and with the painful heat blooming in his chest.

“Can you stand on your leg  _ at all?” _ Thomas asked, hopeful beyond all belief that James would say-

“I-I’ll try,” James stuttered back, fingers gripping Thomas’ shoulder hard. “Heh, snow dulls the pain, right?” he managed to add, but Thomas couldn’t possibly laugh at  _ that _ .

Thomas couldn’t draw away from James or risk him falling and hurting himself even more. But on the flip side, his body was  _ begging _ him to curl up in the snow, to rub at his arms and warm up, already shivering violently as he was. He just swallowed up the cold and kept going, helping James forward.

Forward, but where would that lead? The lights provided some amount of illumination, but not much, and he raked his gaze across the landscape. Sharp rocks jutted from the cliffside, but even if they would provide a break from the wind, Thomas saw no sign of Jack and Alexander, had no way of providing proper shelter or heat, and saw...no reliable prospects. He gritted his teeth. If they stayed out here, they were dead. They had to find something to hide in. A shelter of any sort, a fire.

There was a gap in the rocks. Whether or not it led them to where they were looking to go, it  _ certainly _ led them out of the wind-stricken plateau, and he pushed James along. “Over there!”

James stumbled. Thomas caught him.

They kept going.

* * *

It was dark. It was cold. They were lost.

The aurora, their once source of light, was beginning to die down. Squinting, Thomas looked for any sign of civilization; James, on the other hand, was listening over the wind.

“I hear a wolf howling,” he weakly commented.

That wasn’t comforting at all.

At one point, the path began to slope downward. This time, it was Thomas who tripped, taking James down with him -- but where he expected a yelp of pain, he got nothing.

But that was understandable. The snow kicked up from the wind or their shoes as they walked shoved its way into their shoes, their socks. Melting against their skin, leaving them wet and painfully cold. Painfully cold, until it wasn’t, and he realized he couldn’t feel anything below his knees, and he couldn’t feel James’ hand on his shoulder, but saw the outline of the man right next to him as the weather only picked up and worsened, snow leaving burning pinpricks against their skin.

They collapsed one more time, his fall hard against the... _ solid ice? _ ...of a frozen pond. They were just lucky they hadn’t broken through and fallen in.

Thomas didn’t know if he could get up again -- until he raised his head and saw a surprising shape outlined against the snow: a hunter’s blind. A blind meant someone hunted here. A blind meant they weren’t far from town. Pulling at whatever resolve remained buried deep in his chest, he pushed himself to his feet, then pulled James up with him. “We’re nearly there!” he cried, hoping beyond all else that he wasn’t wrong. His gaze drew upwards, and he saw the sharp point of a radio tower just on the other side of a group of rocks. No, no, he wasn’t wrong! They were so close, surely there would be a town just a step away, they would be okay-

To his shock, James replied, “I smell smoke...”

For a moment, Thomas thought for sure that James was hallucinating from the cold -- until he too sniffed the air, and beyond that chill so cold it burned, he smelled it.

Something was on fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think I ever mentioned it, but the title of this fic is "Don't Go Too Far" because the motto for the game this fic is set in is "How Far Will You Go to Survive?" Just a fun bit of trivia for y'all.
> 
> Anyways, this chapter was a bit shorter just because I didn't want to jump POVs in the same chapter. But we finally get an update on James and Thomas! They're alive, but not well.


	4. Smoke in the Distance

Alexander pulled his knees closer to his chest, muscles sore, shivering, breath coming in little huffs that breathed white clouds into the air. He and John had gotten up once more that night to collect firewood, keep the heat going, and while the air in the cave had warmed up by a few degrees, even sleeping curled up beside the fire, by morning the chill outside was still seeping into his bones.

He scrunched his eyes shut, some part of him desperately hoping that if he just kept them closed, he’d fall asleep again and wake up in bed at home, all of this some terrible sort of dream. But it wasn’t, was it? He was here, this was real, and there was every possibility that he was going to  _ die- _

Something in the distance. A boom, a bang, a rumble that made him yelp and jerk upright, eyes glancing around wildly. Frantically, his gaze slipped to John, the man already up and poking the fire with a stick -- and even he raised his chin slightly and looked towards the mouth of the cave.

“What the Hell was that!?” Alexander squeaked, watching a few clumps of snow fall from the overhang that made the cave’s entrance. They glittered in the sunlight before hitting the ground with a wet  _ thud _ .

“It...it was an earthquake, I think,” John nervously replied. “After that huge earthquake a few years back, Great Bear gets aftershocks...rather commonly, I believe.” Alexander swallowed, gaze trailing to the cavern roof, to which John just shook his head. “We’re a ways from the epicenter in any case. I wouldn’t be too concerned. But...” he rubbed at his arms. “We don’t have any food, or decent clothing. We still gotta get out of this ravine.”

Alexander groaned as he shifted from a “sat up out of pure panic” position to a “sat up in a comfortable and controlled manner” sort of pose, muscles protesting. He refused to consider himself an old man (because he  _ wasn’t _ !), but he also couldn’t claim to be a fan of sleeping on  _ solid rock _ when his usual lodgings included a memory foam mattress. “No shit,” he snapped back, wincing at the pounding in his head. As if reading his mind, John chucked him his water bottle -- the outside was warm; it must have been sitting by the fire -- which he caught with a noise of alarm. After shooting a glare to the other man, he took a couple sips. “Have you looked around outside at all?”

“Not since the sun came up,” John admitted. “I was waiting for dawn so it would warm up...” Alexander distantly nodded, rubbing his eyes. He felt like crap, to put it lightly. Between his sore muscles, the constant cold, and his mild headache, he already wasn’t doing so hot. Add in sleep deprivation from the long day of travelling prior, and then the late night plane-flight-turned-plane-crash that the prior evening had been, and his limbs were almost refusing to cooperate. Still though, he was alive. As a kid, as a teen, as a young adult, he had always said he wasn’t expecting himself to live through his twenties. He had so easily thrown his life on the line with that expectation. Now, he was established, he had a career, he was settled...and he was terrified, because despite the chaos of his earlier years, he was ready to be settled and have a regular career and not be  _ fighting for his life _ once again.

John rose to his feet, brushing off his sleeves. Alexander tentatively raised a hand to his forehead, wincing as he found a nasty bruise, and tiredly drew his gaze up to meet the other man’s eyes. “So...guess we go out to look?” He didn’t ask what would happen if they didn’t find anything. Turning back to the fire, he saw it was already beginning to die down, and he scratched at his sleeves. His fingertips weren’t quite numb like the night prior, but everything about him was cold, clammy.

“Yeah,” John confirmed, watching as Alexander moved to stand, first putting his injured hand to the ground to push him up before hissing and pulling it back against his chest. Using his other hand this time, he finally rose to his feet, wobbling for a moment before watching John sling the emergency kit bag over his shoulder. He must have packed it up while Alexander was sleeping.

They exchanged a nod before the two stepped out into the clearing.

In broad daylight, he could see the scene was quite different than how he had found it to be the night prior. Unlike his first presumption, they weren’t even at the bottom of a ravine -- rather, they were perched on a wide ledge that spanned that entire end of the ravine. Above was a climb at best, and below was a drop to the death at worst. The entire ledge itself was large, too; it almost felt as though one ravine began, then dropped another couple dozen feet down to continue much deeper. But whatever the case, he had no intentions of going down there -- it was only rocks, trees, and snow as far as he could tell, and they would do much better to get the high ground and get a better look at the situation which had unfolded before them.

Alexander huffed, rubbing at his arms, but he was thankful the fire had at least kept him warm while he slept. The wind having died down outside, he was able to move much more freely, although he noted that the sun had yet to truly rise over the ravine they were in.

Still staring upwards, a deeper frown crept across his face as he noted the way the rocks irregularly jutted out and created an impassable climb upwards. He would’ve had little to no luck getting up them normally, and with his hand…

Well, he was just hoping John was feeling charitable today, was all.

“Alexander! Over here!” the other man called with a sharp jerk of his chin past him. One eyebrow raised, Alexander walked over, feet crunching in the snow, before seeing what John was motioning to: a downed tree, partially covered with snow and ice, that lead from their ledge to another one higher up.

“You want us to try climbing up  _ that _ ?” he hissed.

John resolutely nodded. “Where else do we have to go? If we can get up to a higher ledge, we can probably climb from there -- see all the roots hanging down from the top of the cliff? We could grab onto those.”

Choosing not to mention his injured wrist, he just grimaced and followed John to the tree. The other man wasted no time in planting one boot hard against the slick bark, heaving himself up onto the trunk. “If you slip and fall-” Alexander squeaked out as John wobbled to his feet, “You realize we’ll both probably die out here, right?”

“Not plannin’ on it,” John grunted in response, falling to all fours and gripping the bark hard with the palms of his hands. “Wait for me to get across before you follow. Don’t wanna have this shit collapse at the worst possible time.”

“No shit,” Alexander snapped, but waited with an anxiety-clutched chest as John slowly shimmied up the tipped-over tree. After a horrifically long minute, the other man dropped from the tree’s upper limbs into the snow, finding solid footing below. With a gulp, Alexander followed after him, doing his best not to put pressure onto his injured wrist -- but finding himself rather unstable as a result. Heart pounding, he almost wanted to cry when he reached the other side, but toughened up and dropped down to join the other man.

Next came the real challenge -- actually climbing out of there. John seemed hardly perturbed by the challenge, quick to point out a series of ledges where thick shrubs had grown along the edges, their roots jutting out of the rock face. Grabbing one of the woody vines, John gave them an experimental tug, before heaving himself up onto them and bracing his feet against the rock face. Grabbing for a higher vine, he seemed satisfied, dropping back to his feet and rubbing at his frozen fingers to coax some feeling back into them. “Should be an easy climb; roots look plenty stable-”

“Alright, did you forget about my sprained wrist, or are you just intentionally ignoring it?” Alexander snapped, cutting him off. 

John blinked, and Alexander felt a pang of regret as he realized it was likely the former, before the other man crossed his arms and huffed, “You’ll have to brace your legs best you can on the roots, then, like a ladder. I’ll go up first and pull you up.” A pause, and then John softly added, “If I can do it, you can do it.”

Alexander grimaced, but the cold had already seeped through his jacket and made his arms burn, and the best he could do was nod -- because what other choice did he have?

* * *

Alexander hissed as John yanked him up to the final ledge, but graciously fell back in the snow, panting. For the first time since he had been in the rental car with the heater on full blast, he felt warm, simply from the excursion -- but John had yelled at him when he tried to take off his jacket, saying he’d only freeze faster, so he sucked it up and continued to suffer of his own accord.

Huffing, he glanced up to John, the man clearly a bit worn out as well from the climb, rubbing at his shoulder with a pained expression. “Come on,” he said between breaths. “We need to keep moving.”

Alexander groaned, but heaved himself back to his feet, trailing along behind John as they rounded a pile of boulders on the mountain’s ridge -- just before John paused in his step, hands flying to cover his mouth, a desolate, shaking sob escaping his mouth. Alexander rushed forward, heart pounding -- what had John found? A corpse of one of his coworkers? “My plane...” John cried, jogging forwards. Alexander quickly followed, rounding the rocks and looking up with wide eyes as he saw the scene of destruction first-hand.

The plane was left at a crooked angle, caught between rocks, snow, and trees that had been reduced to splinters. The nose was jammed downwards, the windshield busted outwards where they must’ve gone through it. One wing seemed mostly intact...but the other was nearly fully ripped off, clearly having been the source for a good bit of the wreckage scattered about the area. The passenger doors were crooked and nearly ripped off, left hanging at odd angles, and black streaks decorated the area around the cockpit where the electrical system had sparked and caught flame.

Alexander saw tears in the other man’s eyes as John rushed forwards to stand before the wreckage. A part of him was frustrated -- they didn’t have time for John to cry over a plane! -- but when the man broke down sobbing, it was the least he could do to walk over and lend a comforting hand, even if John refused to take it.

“Hah,” John choked out, “Not sure which of us looks worse.” John’s gaze remained steady on his plane, shoulders slumped. “Poor girl...this isn’t how things were supposed to end.”

“I’m sorry, John,” Alexander mumbled.

“That plane was my livelihood!” the man only cried in reply. “I was so lucky to get my hands on it in the first place, so lucky that my father and family supported me through this, so lucky to find myself in a career I loved. Sturdier bush plane’s never been built, and look! She was torn to pieces, the whole system fried.” He kicked his feet through the snow, leaving a little cloud of ice in their wake. Alexander wasn’t sure what to say. John surely had insurance; if they got out of this alive, they could rebuild -- keyword ‘ _ if _ ,’ as in his opinion, they had more pressing matters to worry about.

He simply sighed, “I’m so sorry. But please, we have to keep going.”

He saw John sniff, and the man replied, “Right. No use cryin’ when your tears’ll freeze on your eyelashes.” That wasn’t what Alexander was implying, but it seemed to snap John out of his stupor, the man wiping at his eyes and stepping closer to the plane. “I need to get up there. I keep a satellite phone in the cockpit -- might be our one chance at getting out of this place.”

Alexander watched him grab at the broken remnants of the trees that had cushioned the plane’s fall, pulling himself up -- Alexander saw him wince and falter once, his shoulder once again apparently causing trouble, but otherwise managed to make his way up to the cockpit. Alexander couldn’t help but worry that the plane was concerningly unstable, but kept his mouth shut as John got to work, instead moving to scan the area. There were no footprints -- but that wasn’t surprising. The wind had been vicious the night before, and besides, he and John had been thrown through the windshield; it was possible Thomas and James had been tossed in a similar manner.

He walked to the very edge of the cliff, wincing as he saw the area below where they had previously been trapped. It looked like such a long drop from this angle. Stomach flipping with vertigo, he backed away, instead surveying what wreckage was left scattered up above. He blinked in surprise as he noticed that the cargo must’ve been thrown out as well, as their suitcases and supplies had been scattered across the clearing.

“I see smoke off in the distance!” John suddenly yelled, shading one hand against the morning sun and using the other to brace himself against the tree.

“T-that’s good, right?” Alexander asked, raising his voice to be sure John heard him. “Smoke means a town.” Turning his gaze back to the jagged rocks and trees on the horizon, he squinted, barely able to make out a darker smudge on the landscape.

He saw John frown, the man quietly -- almost so quietly Alexander couldn’t hear him -- mumbling, “That’s a  _ lot _ of smoke.” But then, he took the least heaving move to clamber up to the plane’s cockpit, calling down, “Well, no corpse’s in here, at least!” His tone was lighter than before, but Alexander could still hear his voice wavering. A moment later, John dropped something into the snow below him. “One phone, coming up.” John soon joined Alexander on the ground, brushing off the snow. It was clunky with a thick antenna and a physical keypad -- it honest-to-God looked like a late-90’s/early-2000s Nokia. John pressed a button to turn it on -- but Alexander felt his heart drop as John grimaced and mumbled, “The Hell? I know I charged this shit!” He flipped it over and popped open the back, only to hiss. The battery compartment, the electrical components, all destroyed.

“Well, that’s just fantastic!” Alexander hissed, then paused as a realization hit him. “Wait. The plane, the flashlight, now your satellite phone. All of ‘em broken right as the northern lights filled the sky...”

“What’re you implying?” John snapped.

“I’m  _ telling _ you that I don’t think it happened by coincidence. I think-”

“A solar flare,” John finished for him, eyes wide. “That explains the lights in the sky. That’s what we were always told in school, scare the little kids ‘n all that -- that if there was a solar flare, we’d lose electricity, communications, all that. It’d eat satellites for breakfast. You think…?”

“It’s likely,” Alexander confirmed. “We’re so far north, we were probably hit with the worst of it. Who knows about the rest of the world.” A sigh. “Which means our first task has to be finding Thomas and James, then trying to meet up with any locals and get shelter. We don’t know how much of the world has been impacted, or what state emergency services are in. This could very easily be a helluva lot worse than we first thought.”

“Well, that’s just fantastic,” John hissed, chucking the phone at the nearby rocks. “Just fantastic.”

The two stood in silence for a few moments, shivering in the cold, before Alexander turned on his heel and walked over to the suitcase he recognized as his own. “No use trying to carry a heavy suitcase through this snow. I packed some garbage bags in mine for dirty clothes; we should layer up, grab toiletries and underclothes and personal belongings and everything, then carry what we can out of here.”

“Bags? As in multiple?” John had an odd look on his face, perhaps some combination of amusement and frustration, but he dutifully wandered to find the whereabouts of his own bag. Unlike the neat and prim suitcases Alexander and his coworkers had packed, John had apparently stuffed a rugged backpack with the basics and called it a day.

“For shoes and stuff!” Alexander defended, fingers fumbling at the zipper. At least his bag was a hard shell suitcase; it was effectively waterproof. John dragged his bag over -- although as it was already a wearable backpack rather than a suitcase, the most the man did was throw some extra layers on his body and sling the emergency kit overtop it all. “We should try to take some of Thomas’ and James’ things, too,” Alexander added.

“What’re the odds we happen to wander in the same direction, all survive, and reunite to find them in need of extra pants?” John said sarcastically, kicking at the snow at his feet.

“I dunno, what’re the odds you’ll shut the fuck up?” Alexander snapped. “If they’re dead, then free shit for us. If they’re alive, and we find them as such, then we just did them a service.”

John turned to stare towards a gap in the boulders, likely the only exit from there. “Know what? Who’s to say. Maybe there’s only one way outta here, and we’ll meet up again.” He pulled at the straps around his shoulders. “Only one way to find out.”

“Yeah,” Alexander sighed, tucking a loose strand of hair behind his ear. “Yeah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> John isn't trying to be pessimistic; he's trying to be realistic. He and Alexander were freezing the night before, and the only reason they survived was because they found the emergency kit and had decent shelter. If they found Thomas and James half-frozen but still alive, sure, they could try to start a fire and warm them up, but they're out in the remote mountains of Great Bear. What're their chances of finding them by coincidence, unless they all manage to be drawn to the same place?


	5. Mountain Town

Against every goddamn odd, there really _did_ seem to be only one logical way out of there. Boulders and sheer rock faces towered above them, occasionally a clump of snow falling to the ground with a wet _thump_ and a _splat_. So long as they stuck to walking only between the rocks rather than trying to climb (which would more than likely end in disaster), the ground seemed to slope in such a way that there was no sense deviating from their path. Occasionally there’d be a gap in the stone, or a small ridge to climb to, but each one was so narrow, so out-of-the-way. Alexander just told himself it was likely that they’d have more luck continuing to head in the direction of the smoke and taking the least-obstructed, least-convoluted paths.

And, also...well, surely Thomas and James would have taken the most obvious route too, right? Rather than curl up and die in a snowbank?

He and John had taken everything they could from the crash site. John had his backpack of personal belongings, but as it wasn’t stuffed fully, they had transferred the emergency kit into it. Alexander had then taken the drawstring and dug around in his suitcase. He had resigned himself to also having to carry a garbage bag as John had teased him over, but was pleasantly surprised to remember he had packed a messenger bag squished into the bottom of his suitcase. It had originally been to carry his laptop and paperwork. He winced upon picking it up and realizing how heavy his laptop was, and how much room it would take up in his bag.

“I doubt it’ll even turn on,” John pointed out with a sigh. “No point taking it.” Alexander grimaced, but nodded. It was company property, anyways; it wasn’t like he was personally responsible for replacing it. His phone was another story, but Alexander was fairly sure his phone had been chucked to hell and back in that plane crash. Even if he did find it again, he doubted it would have fared any differently than his computer.

In the end, Alexander had loaded up the drawstring with a number of his own belongings -- clothes, toiletries, and a bag of trail mix -- then, awkwardly, he dug around for his coworker’s things. They weren’t coming back here, that much was certain, and while he had no intentions of messing around with his coworker’s personal shit too much, he at least stuffed some of their belongings into the bag. At some point, John sighed and took the garbage back to stuff a change or two of their clothes into, and then they were off.  
So now, in the present, they were left trudging through the snow with cold, wet feet and piss-poor attitudes about the whole thing as they walked. Alexander at least couldn’t complain much anymore, as he couldn’t feet his feet, although at least the extra layers on his torso helped.

And they walked.

For what felt like hours.

Hey -- he couldn’t see the sun for half the day parked below those rocks as they were, so it wasn’t his fault he didn’t know what time it was.

Suddenly, John threw out an arm, stopping Alexander dead in his tracks. “That’s a wolf,” he whispered.

Alexander looked, squinting. Sure enough, in the trough of the slope they were heading down, there was a dark smudge with its head down, tearing into the carcass of...something. He swallowed. “Uh, how likely is it to eat us too?”

“It’s clearly not starving,” John muttered. “Just...let’s try to be quiet, give it a wide berth. Wolves don’t usually attack people. It’ll be more preoccupied with eating than messing with us.”

“Let’s hope,” Alexander replied.

They skirted around the wolf, backs not quite pressed to the rock face, footsteps quick.

The entire affair of a maze of rocks seemed to end in a little pond. The ice was solidly frozen over, and he and John paused for a moment to seek for a path to continue down, before John suddenly cried out -- “Look, I see a radio tower pole!”

Alexander’s gaze snapped to just above the line of boulders, John already grabbing him by the hand and dragging him forward, making Alexander trip and stumble to keep up. “Wait, John, hand on a second-”

Then the smell hit them with a gust of icy wind that made Alexander’s nostrils burn. That smell that was almost electric, smoky, and encapsulated the taste of ice and snow and winter, all rolled into one as they ran up the slope at the other edge of the pond and towards where John had sighted the radio tower.

The first thing John noticed was the hunched figure lying limp at the base of the tower -- and the first thing Alexander noticed was the source of the smell: the town beyond. More like a village, really, hosting perhaps two dozens houses.

At least, it must have at one time, but now...it was destroyed. Burnt down. Half of it was nothing but ashes, the other half empty with not a soul in sight, windows boarded up and roads covered in snow.

“Holy shit!” John shouted, dropping to his knees beside the body -- but when Alexander nervously stooped down to see the same, he realized it wasn’t James or Thomas. It was another man, another dead body, skin a pale blue-grey. They had died, huddled up beneath the radio tower.

Terror seizing in his throat, Alexander clambered to his knees only to wobble backwards.

Death count: 1.

“J-John, look at the town...” Alexander squeaked.

The man did, reply with a hollow cry from deep in his throat. “Oh- oh no. When- when the aurora hit, my plane went up in sparks, in flames. If the same thing happened to a faulty wiring system in even one home...”

“Then the others would burn as well,” Alexander finished for him. He looked back over to the stiff, curled form in the snow. Who had they been?

“Come on,” John grunted, heaving his bag over his shoulder once more, shoulders stiff. “Come on! I’m- I’m fucking freezing. We need to see if anyone’s still left alive down there.”

Tripping over himself to follow, the two practically slid down the rest of the slope travelling down into town.

* * *

Alexander’s skin crawled as they crept towards the empty town. It seemed nearly abandoned, in every sense of the word. There were few cars, and those that were parked were done so haphazardly, snow drifts collecting around then. Many buildings appeared to be nothing more than tiny rental homes that had never completed construction and had been abandoned. There were crates of junked stacked up around said buildings, the ones that hadn’t caught flame. Those that had were nothing more than husks of what they had been, the interior already filled with white-peppered-black snow. As Alexander had previously noted, many buildings had windows or doors boarded up, “FORECLOSURE” tape hung across the entrance ways.

This town was already dead before the fire, and now, it seemed there was no one else to be found -- alive _or_ dead, although Alexander was very, very careful not to look too closely into the burned structures. His stomach was already flipping and his knees weakened from seeing the frozen corpse alone. If he saw anything else of the likes, he’d likely vomit up his nonexistent dinner/lunch/breakfast and be unable to slow his heartbeat for the rest of the day.

A much larger townhouse sat a bit elevated from the rest of the town near the slope he and John had descended. Elevated as it was, it had been one of the structures spared from the flames -- and after a brief exchange of worried glances, the two men headed up towards the entranceway. If there were anyone still alive here, surely this would be where they’d end up, in home with room for all to gather in and a noticeable chimney sticking out of the roof for a warming fire, although there was no smoke coming from it now.

Alexander raised his hand to knock, and just as he did, the door swung open.

Perfectly understandably, considering the circumstances and the fact he hadn’t considered someone waiting on the other side of the door, he shrieked.

“Hamilton! Jesus Christ, calm down,” Thomas yelped, throwing his hands wide and trying to hush the other man.

“God- Thomas!?” Alexander shot back in disbelief, heart still sputtering after that shock of surprise. “You’re alive!”

“ _You’re_ alive!” Thomas snapped in reply, clearly as surprised as Alexander was. “We lost you after the crash and after you didn’t show up for nearly a _day_ , had to...had to assume you hadn’t made it...”

Where Alexander was shocked, brain stuttering too much to vocalize any of the dozens of questions swimming in his head, John leapt to speak. “Dare I ask why you were cooped up in someone else’s house?”

Thomas swallowed, before stepping back from the doorway and beckoning Alexander and John inside. “Get in first. We can’t let the cold in.”

Once inside, Alexander rubbed at his arms, looking around. Even inside, his breath still left frozen clouds in the air, and he grimaced against the chill. John kicked the door shut behind him as Alexander glanced around, taking a few steps further inside. The walls were covered in some old, stripe-patterned wallpaper; to the left was a small kitchen/dining room, and to the right was a tiny living room and fireplace, left unlit. A small, cheap-looking couch was pressed up against one wall -- James Madison sitting on it, one leg tucked up under him and the other stretched out, blankets wrapped across his shoulders.

“So?” John demanded, turning to Thomas. “Talk. The whole town’s destroyed and devoid of life, save for you two. The fuck’s going on?”

Thomas groaned, running his hands through his hair. Alexander took the opportunity to dump his things on the ground while Thomas mulled over what to say. Finally, the man explained, “James was thrown from the place as it crashed, while I was left danglin’ in the backseat. Think I might’ve bruised or cracked a couple ribs -- it hurts to breathe too hard. James is in even worse shape; he screwed up his leg. Think his foot or ankle is sprained, if not broken.” He paused to take a breath before resuming. “By some luck, we stumbled our way down here. Smelled smoke and went to take a look. The town- god, the whole town was on _fire._ ”

Alexander looked to John with wide eyes before John piped up, “It was a solar flare. Had to’ve been; took out all the power, made sparks fly. One faulty electrical system or poorly placed device would spark a flame. If the power was out, people probably gathered together to stay warm, not noticing the flame.”

Thomas nodded, mouth tight. “And by the time they did, it’d’ve been too late. We were half-frozen, couldn’t think straight, and you know small towns; people leave their doors unlocked. We went to the nearest building that was safe from the flames, tried to find help, but no one was home -- and the buildings caught in the fire had already caved in by the time we got here. There...there was nothing we could do. So we’ve been huddling in here. I went to look around town today -- the fire’s out, but...the place is deserted, and it clearly wasn’t like that yesterday.”

Silence. Alexander swallowed thickly before mumbling, “So what I’m hearing is, we’re alone in a nearly-destroyed town in the Canadian wilderness after a natural disaster with no hope of contacting the outside world from here.” Without giving the others a chance to respond, he scoffed, “Well, lucky for you guys, I grabbed some shit outta your suitcases in the slim case we’d find each other.”

“That’s convenient,” James piped up a bit forcefully, as if to try and dispel the darkness, the pessimism. “That’s awesome,” he said again.

Alexander grimaced. Thomas turned to John. “Do you have any idea where we are? Euh, Jack, your name is?”

“Just call me John,” he replied. “And...maybe? But...” he took a heaving breath, pressing his palms to his temples. “I don’t know. God, this is- just. I don’t know. I’ve never landed on the western side of Great Bear; I was due to drop you guys on the landing strip to the east. I’d have to see a map.” He shook his head.

Thomas frowned, before repeating the action, curly hair bouncing as he did so. “Fine, fine.” He rubbed his hands together. “That’s fine. If nothing, though...well, this house has a fireplace and a wood pile out back, and there’s some canned food in the cupboard.” He rubbed his eyes. “We’re alive, we have at least enough of a meal for tonight, and we have warmth for now. That’s all that matters.”

“That’s all that matters,” Alexander repeated, looking outside. Clouds had begun to roll in as he and John had approached the town, and now, a light snowfall was gracing the area.

It was so nice outside. It seemed so peaceful.

He didn’t understand how, knowing the snow fell among the remains of the dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the game this is based off of, the story goes that all the residents of the town gathered in the schoolhouse for warmth and shelter after the power went out. Unfortunately for them, a group of convicts escaped after the bus they were being transported on went dead and crashed; the convicts then went about setting fire to the town, trapping the people inside the schoolhouse and burning them alive. I ended up cutting the story mode characters (convicts included) as this is based more off the sandbox mode and they don't really fit, but that provides some context as to what happened to the residents of the town and why I changed the explanation of the fires as I did.
> 
> But hey! Thomas and James are alive, and that's just swell. :)


	6. Milton House

The snow and wind outside had picked up once again to the extent where Thomas had declared it was useless to try going out to look for other survivors or supplies. So, they were stuck in the house. They had quickly gotten each other caught up on the situation -- Alex and John’s theory of a solar flare, the state of the town, their long list of injuries. James was clearly frustrated that he was stuck sitting down and barred from helping with much of anything, but the others had unanimously agreed that whether he just had a horrible sprain or had fully torn or broken something, he could hardly walk, and until they found some kind of crutch for him, it would be best not to strain his injury any further than it already had been.

They didn’t have much to work with. Alexander could have sworn he had seen a water tower when they were entering the town -- but either the pipes had frozen up, or the water had been shut off, because they didn’t have any running water. The house also had no gas heating; it seemed it relied on electric heat and the fireplace. Thomas pointed out something that Alexander would have never noticed -- not only was there no fireplace on the second floor, but there were no grates connecting the two stores. Apparently the guy had grown up in a historical farmhouse or something with shitty heating, because he actually knew how to build up a proper fire and how to keep heat inside when there was a power outage. And- well, Alexander of all of them was the only one who most certainly hadn’t dealt with snowstorms and blizzards as a kid, even if everyone else in the room was still from the American South and wasn’t  _ exactly _ an expert in survival up near the arctic circle. Still, though, he was at least going to  _ try _ to help, even if he didn’t exactly know how.

He had ended up poking around the house for supplies. Upstairs there were the bedrooms, along with a bathroom and storage room. Some medicine in the cabinet in the bathroom. Blankets and pillows on the beds. A thick, crochet blanket hung over the railing at the top of the stairs -- and that was what made Alexander take pause. Clearly whoever had lived here previously had put hours of love and work into it -- and chances were, they’d probably grabbed what they could before someone else in their community brought them to a safer place to weather out the power outage.

And now…

Death count: A whole town.

Pushing such thoughts out of his head, he poked around in the storage room, finding some more blankets, gardening tools and herbicide, a box of dry crackers. Not much left behind in here; he could only assume whoever lived here stayed here alone. Plenty of furniture, but not many personal possessions to fill it beyond that mark. And when he went to check the fridge downstairs, he saw a similar story: a couple food items that really weren’t made to be refrigerated in the first place (who puts  _ canned beans _ in the freezer?), a pack of cheese slices, and a bunch of bread.

He sighed. Alright, he was guilty of putting bread in the fridge too, much to the chagrin of nearly everyone else he spoke to. Still, though, there wasn’t much to work with. Mostly canned or boxed foods tossed about in the pantry -- although, at least they wouldn’t need to worry about their supplies going bad.

Thomas and John had decidedly taken the role of “people actually capable of moving furniture around” (Alexander would’ve liked to argue -- Thomas clearly winced when he stretched too far -- but considering his wrist, even if he was normally stronger, he didn’t want to injure himself further). So, they had taken it upon themselves to start pulling together a warm place for the night, dragging mattresses downstairs, keeping the fire going, and hanging up blankets to try and stop the heat from escaping upstairs.

Alexander and John had also dumped the clothes and everything else they’d grabbed from the crash site. They had all agreed there was no use trying to make their way back up there, and would have to work with what they had; really, though, Alexander was just happy he had thought to get extra socks and pants so he could change into something that wasn’t wet and frozen, dumping his wet clothes and boots by the fireplace. Thomas was thankful, too -- Alexander had found a pair of glasses in the man’s bag and figured he’d best bring them; the guy was understandably  _ incredibly _ relieved to realize he’d actually be able to see.

Eventually, he ended up dropping down next to James, who was still unhappily stuck sitting -- but even as the man shifted in his seat, his lips curled into a pained frown. After pushing towels up against the front door -- to block a draft, was how it had been explained to Alexander -- Thomas walked back into the living space to join them.

And finally, John made his way downstairs, dumping a thick duvet onto the floor. Seeing the others gathered around the fireplace, he paused for a moment, before taking a seat on one of the mattresses -- which had been set just facing the fire at an angle, giving enough space for them to put things to dry or cook near the flames, while keeping everyone at least somewhat near the fire when they were to sleep.

A pause, the room falling silent for a few moments, before Thomas awkwardly sat down on the opposite mattress, saying, “So...what’re we gonna do for dinner?”

“There’s bread and, like, plastic cheese, in the fridge,” Alexander replied. “We’ll probably want to eat up perishables first, so...”

“Firstly, I agree with that,” James added. “Crack open a thing’a tomato soup and you’re about set.” He shifted in his seat, crossing his arms. “However -- I am going to propose that we do  _ not _ call it ‘plastic cheese.’”

“That’s the correct term for it!” Alexander cried.

Thomas just scoffed. “Maybe, but it makes it sound even more unappealing than it is. Processed cheese? Cheese singles? Hell, just call it ‘cheese’ and I’m sure we’ll know what it is when we see it. At least it’s still edible, not a ‘pasteurized cheese snack’ or whatever the hell Easy Cheese is s’posed to be.”

“You take that back!” John jumped into their argument. “Easy Cheese is delicious on crackers! Don’t be hatin’ on shit you don’t understand. Every cheese has a place in this house.”

“God, of all the people I had to be stuck in a survival situation with!” Alexander finally threw his hands up in frustration. “Are we eating the fucking cheese, or not? Can any of you people even cook on a fire?”

“ _ I _ was a boy scout,” Thomas just answered, self-assuredly jabbing a thumb into his chest. Alexander rolled his eyes with a huff.

* * *

At least there were plenty of bowls in the cabinets. Alexander had distinct memories of cooking grilled cheese on a hotplate during his college years, so unsurprisingly, Thomas had managed to finagle some sort of pan-over-the-flames setup that worked well enough for their purposes without burning their food  _ too _ horribly.

And there sat four men with bowls, plates, and napkins, drinking water made from snow melted over the fire. They sat on the mattresses, arranged in a v-shape of sorts so that everyone could face the fire -- John was on the far left, then Alex beside him (carefully maintaining a few inches of breathing space). Then, on the other mattress, came James nearest to Alexander and Thomas sitting on the far right. They had gathered up pillows and blankets, although the heat from the fire certainly did its part in keeping everyone warm.

What luxury.

(Unsurprisingly, that sentiment was sarcastic.)

“You know,” John stated, breaking the silence (well, as silent as you could get between the crackling fire and the near-deafening, awkward quiet among the men), “This might actually be the best grilled cheese I’ve had in a damn long time.”

A moment of silence, and then Thomas burst out laughing with, “Hell, dare I ask when was the last time you even had a grilled cheese?”

“I’m sure anything’s gonna taste decent after you haven’t eaten for a day and are recovering from a near-death experience,” Alexander spat, fully aware he was ruining the (at least somewhat upbeat) mood. But hey, at least he was speaking from experience. Plus the tomato soup, despite being from a can, wasn’t  _ that _ bad.

But instead, John laughed (although it hovered somewhere between genuine amusement and the full realization that he was about to snap at Alexander), replying, “That’s bold, coming from the man famously known to eat anything anyone threw at him. Or is it just that you legitimately enjoyed the shit they fed us?”

“Sorry I care more about not starving than I do about fine dining!” Alexander snapped back, setting his nearly-empty bowl on the floor specifically so he could spread his arms in a show of  _ what the fuck is wrong with you? _ “Christ, what kind of high-end restaurants are you even going to as a fucking  _ bush pilot _ who lives out of his hangar in the middle of nowhere!?”

Their argument was interrupted by Thomas, who leaned forward, light from the fireplace highlighting the grin on his face. Almost deviously, he asked, “So, you two know each other?”

“Not in any way that concerns you,” John grunted dismissively. Alexander leaned forward enough that he could see John’s face caught in the light, being sure that John could all the same see the glare now planted across his features.

“No,” Alexander snapped, crossing his arms. “Considering we’re stuck together for the foreseeable future, I think it’s quite pertinent that I explain.” And with a flourish to throw John into the figurative spotlight, he flatly explained, “Of  _ all _ the people -- who scheduled our flights; Washington’s secretary? -- could’ve gotten to ship us out to Great Bear, well...Thomas, James, meet John, my ex-boyfriend from my army days who  _ apparently _ got kicked outta the military and ran away to Canada.”

“Shut the fuck up Alexander!” John hissed back at him. “I was  _ honorably _ discharged for medical reasons after I was  _ shot! _ What happened after that was none of your goddamn business!” None of his business? They weren’t done with; they hadn’t broken up! They were going through a rough patch in their relationship, a side effect of the stress and the lack of sleep and the stupid, mind-numbing tasks that came with the job. That was something that could be fixed. And instead, John got his shoulder blown up,  _ disappeared _ due to the severity of his injuries requiring more intensive treatment-

And then nothing. Not a trace of where he went; not one hint that he was still alive. And then a decade later, he  _ shows up _ as a bush pilot in remote Canada, by some miracle suffering few effects of his injury, and had was now happily claiming that he was not in the wrong! Not him, no-siree!

Alexander and John were just about each other’s throats, as in the background, James’ expression progressively grew into grimace and Thomas’ face seemed to flash through emotions corresponding to a hundred questions. Finally, though, the latter of the two managed to spit out, “Wait, you were in the army?” Then, after a glare from both men sitting on the other mattress, tried again -- this time producing the equally terrible question of, “Wait, you’re gay?”

Well, at least Alexander couldn’t attempt to strangle John now, as he was too busy facepalming. Still, he had to set the record straight (heh), and muttered in reply, “Hey, I’m interested in the ladies, too.”

“I’m not,” John unhelpfully supplied, leading to another facepalm on Alexander’s part. If nothing else, though, that had managed to interrupt their argument, breaking it up enough for their little entourage to return to silence.

It was dark outside. Cold outside. Quiet outside. And in here, it was bright and warm and the fire crackled and Alexander rubbed his arms, wincing. James audibly sighed. “Well, not to drag things down any further, but...what’re we going to do from here?”

John shifted on the mattress, putting his bowl on the floor beside Alex’s. “I still don’t know for sure where we are, so finding a map is our top priority. There’s  _ some _ food in this house, but not a lot. So we’ll need more to eat, more water, firewood. Warm clothing. With three-fourths of the town burned to the ground, I dunno how much we’ll find here to last us -- hell, I don’t even know if there’s anywhere else for us to  _ go _ .”

“Milton,” Thomas suddenly supplied. “The water tower on the way in...it read ‘Milton.’”

“Still,” John continued, weakly shrugging as if to say, ‘ _ why would I know where that is? _ ’, “I fly a floatplane. I’ve dropped people at the sardine cannery, at the whaling facility. Most of my other runs are to the same place you guys were s’posed to go, up in Perseverance Mills to drop supplies. Hardly any other towns around here bigger than a village. Fact of the matter is, I’ve never been here before, and I don’t know where to find help -- but  _ God _ , we’re gonna need it.”

“Then there we go, I guess,” was all Alexander could muster, tapping his fingertips against his leg. “Explore, look for more supplies. Figure out where we are, and where the next town over is. Then start walking.”

The other men mumbled their hesitant agreements, Thomas finally picking up the conversation with a simple, “Let’s just see about gettin’ to bed. Nothin’ much to be done until it’s light outside. We can just pile up everyone’s bowls with the rest of our stuff, I guess, and see about getting some snow melting to rinse them out or something in the morning.” Even in an abandoned town, the home’s owner likely dead, they at least still had the decency to wash the dishes and put them back where they belonged.

And while everyone went about their last minute business and got ready to settle down for the night (John and Alex were sharing a mattress; of course they were), Thomas started laughing until Alexander couldn’t help but snap at him and ask what was so funny.

“Nothin’ much,” the man admitted. “But...nice beard, Hamilton.” Without thinking, Alexander’s hand shot up to his jaw, expectedly finding light stubble underneath his fingertips. In one sense, he was blessed to be able to grow facial hair based on his heritage alone; on the other hand, he was cursed to grow it  _ way _ too fast.

“I’m Puerto Rican!” he reflexively shot back, gathering his wits after a moment to add, “And at least I look good with a beard, unlike  _ some _ people.” Well, he was of Puerto Rican  _ descent _ , but was born-n-raised in Nevis. But the little details aside...well, there was a reason he stuck with a goatee.

That said, Thomas could fuck off.

Still, Thomas took Alexander’s teasing well, and after ensuring nothing was likely to catch fire overnight, the four men fell into sleep.

One day survived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I ended up changing around the chapter titles because they fit better this way, haha.)
> 
> Well, the guys made it through another night, this time together! The power's only been out for a day, and with little heating, the cheese was probably still fine. The house was already practically empty -- the owner probably took their things and went off to stay with someone else -- but they at least still have a little bit left to work with.
> 
> All that said, they're still doing their best to pretend things are normal. They dragged down full mattresses into the living room so they can sleep on real beds without freezing overnight. They ate a meal made from somewhat-fresh ingredients prepared for their dinner, and planned to clean up afterwards. Most importantly, they're still harboring hope that help is only a short walk down the road away.
> 
> Sidenote; John did have his shoulder pretty badly injured, but was incredibly lucky in that he healed very well -- it's come up before in a previous chapter, but he's gotten back all movement/lifting strength, and only experiences slight pain under certain conditions.


	7. Milton Park

Alexander awoke to a faint pounding in the back of his skull, making him wince and regrettably peel his eyes open. He was on his side, curled under thick blankets, and was staring at someone’s back, their curly hair a sloppy mess, plastered against the bare mattress. Another round of throbbing pain shot through his head, and his mind could only supply: damn, what did I  _ drink _ last night?

It took a few moments for him to wake up enough to register the man he was laying beside as John -- this wasn’t the first time he’d woken up to see the other still asleep beside him -- but in only a few more moments, he was reminded: ah, yes.

They were currently in a bit of a  _ situation, _ as his brain happily provided.

Rubbing his forehead, his headache seemed to subside a bit -- he wouldn’t be shocked if he was more than a touch dehydrated, but they needed to fix up some more water for dishes and such anyways -- and he sat up. To one side, the fire was still burning, and two logs had been thrown on it recently, judging by the fact that they were only just beginning to catch. Despite the large windows, between blankets and keeping the fireplace hot, it seemed that they hadn’t had much trouble with warmth overnight. And, well, considering he had spent the previous evening huddled on the cold stone floor of a cave, he found even a shitty mattress on the living room floor leaps and bounds more preferable.

He perked up at the sound of shifting blankets, glancing away from the fire. Thomas was awake, or at least he assumed as much, since he could see the man’s eyes open, although he was staring blankly at the wallpaper and not focusing on much else. Running one hand through his hair, Alexander broke the silence with, “Thomas? You up?”

Thomas clearly heard him, as the man took a long few seconds to sigh and run a tired hand over his face, before he finally muttered, “Yeah.” He seemed to fully regret having woken up, and honestly, Alexander couldn’t blame him; it was easier to relax into the bliss of rest than to actively face their current situation. “D’ya need somethin’?”  
“I was just asking,” Alexander mumbled, and offered no more explanation. Glancing out the window, he could see that the light snowfall from the previous evening had left a new coat of white powder across everything in sight, but the sky itself was clear. After another minute of sitting and waking up, seeing that Thomas still made no move to get up himself and the other two were still asleep, Alexander groaned and pushed himself to his feet.

He checked where he had put his clothes to dry the night before. While he had slept in a fresh change grabbed out of his luggage, he didn’t have much in the way of spare clothes beyond what he had been wearing the day before and that night, and wanted to make sure his clothes hadn’t been ruined. Satisfied that they were reasonably dry and still wearable, he folded them up and threw them back into his bag, then checked his boots. To his surprise, they were dry as well -- he had been resigning himself to experiencing all manners of foot diseases caused by tromping around in wet boots, but then again, he had bought said shoes for the express purpose to walking around in the snowy wasteland that was Great Bear, so he could at least rest assured that the boots really  _ were _ water resistant as they had been labelled on the box.

At some point during his inspection, Thomas got up and threw on his own shoes, curtly saying, “I’m gonna get some water going” before heading out. Alexander ignored him, and by the time that John and James were waking up, Thomas had come back in with a full pot of snow to set up by the fireplace.

* * *

Everyone seemed subdued that morning. The excitement of the crash and their walk into town had faded, and instead, they were hit with the growing dread that they had once again awoken in an unfamiliar place with no clear course of action. Thomas melted water over the fire, enough for everyone to at least grab a rag and wipe down their scrapes and splotches of dirt and soot they’d gained over the past night. No one seemed too interested in eating at the moment (Alexander was positive that if he tried anything, he’d puke as it was), so they once again gathered around the fireplace to talk.

“Best thing to do is split up and explore the town,” John said. “Find a map and get our bearings, plus supplies. Reconvene in a couple hours with what we’ve got.” He thoughtlessly tugged at a strand of hair that had come loose from its tie and added, “Who knows? Might find someone else still hanging around.”

That was a distressingly casual way to say, “Maybe there’s someone who didn’t die in a burning building the other night,” but Alexander didn’t speak up on the matter.

Thomas, instead, was the next person to comment. “We should go in pairs. Snow’s deep outside and who knows what kinda wildlife will be coming into town with the people gone?” Alexander frowned, thinking back to the wolf he and John had seen, while Thomas babbled on, “James and I can go together, and you and Alexander.”

There was a short stretch of awkward silence, to which Thomas furrowed his brow and gave a “what?” sort of look; after a few seconds, James pointed out the obvious: “I can barely walk.” Thomas winced in realization, but James at least attempted to lighten the mood by pointing out, “Besides, if we were going to pair up, it’d have to be Alex and me, then you and John.”

“Why’s that?” John asked, clearly trying to figure out the reasoning behind James’ pairings.

“Because Hamilton hates me the least out of everyone here!” James earnestly replied. Alexander rolled his eyes, but didn’t deny it (honestly, James was probably right), and that was enough for the other men to laugh, so no harm was done.

Finally, Alexander spoke up, saying, “Let’s just make a deal to stay on the main street and within the town’s limits. The snow isn’t as deep on the roads, and it’s away from the cliffs and slopes we had to climb out of to get down here in the first place. As long as you people can actually harness some common sense…”

Thomas scoffed, and John rose to his feet. “Fine by me. We’ll meet back here in a bit, then -- say, when your feet start freezing off, come back.”

Thomas and Alexander nodded, and James just sighed, muttering, “Guess I’ll see about...getting the dishes washed. Boil some more snow, keep the fire on.”

“There’s no point in fucking up your leg further,” Thomas pointed out, a bit forcefully. “Might as well make the most of it.”

They went about emptying out space in their bags (they were going to be returning to the house soon anyways, so it was better to dump out their clothes and have an empty backpack to take with them to carry whatever they found back home), then Thomas, John, and Alexander laced up their boots, grabbed their coats, and headed back outside.

* * *

Milton may have crumbled in the fire, but it had been dying for many years before that. As Alexander walked along the street running through town, snow crunching beneath his boots, he realized that he was truly walking through an empty town.

The town’s downfall was printed in endless papers and fliers. Old notices taped to a community board by the bank, warning that due to heavy metal contamination the town water supply had been shut off. Warnings hammered into the doors of houses (the paper long since peeling away from the wood) of foreclosures. A bitter taste filled his mouth as he opened the door to one house -- one of the few that survived in that part of the town, as it was nearest to the source of the fire, and it’s door was unlocked (of course it was, as everyone who once lived here was surely friendly) -- and found the interior gutted and empty. A construction project -- one of many, he would soon find -- never to be completed, as the town’s dwindling resources and poor location surely discouraged anyone from trying to make a new life there.

Could he get a reminder as to exactly why Washington thought there was anything to be found for the company out here on Great Bear?

Alexander had been jumping between houses, for the most part, only glancing in through the windows or dipping inside for a moment to check the post office and credit bureau, but had paused to loot little.

Admittedly, though, part of his reasoning for that was because of the connotation.  _ Looting. _ They were going through what had been someone’s home and  _ stealing _ from them, and the way that was phrased made him sick...though, he did slip a hand warmer into his pocket, just to fight off the chill that was making his injured wrist suddenly ache (wasn’t cold supposed to dull the pain?).

Everything felt numb and wispy, like his mind couldn’t quite fathom that he was really staggering about looking in abandoned houses for supplies. Like in another hour or two, they’d realize that what had happened was an isolated incident, and they didn’t  _ need _ to fight for their survival, because they’d be okay and everything could go back to normal.

Despite his own hesitation, he wasn’t going to slow the others down. He didn’t  _ take _ anything, but he looked around. Found some food and firewood logs. Dressers and closets with warm clothes. He entered each building, stifling his own discomfort, and made sure to kick the snow off of his boots before he stepped too far away from the welcome mat. He called out if anyone was there, poked around, made note of what he found, and left.

After a short while of him ducking into assorted buildings, Alexander by chance ran into John at the very edge of town, nearest to wear the worst of the fire had devastated the area. Naturally, the other man was headed  _ out _ of town (exactly where they had agreed they wouldn’t stray), and Alexander loudly made his protests known. “Where the fuck are  _ you _ going?”

John turned to face him, a glare fresh on his face, simply answering, “I can see a gas station just down the road. It’s not that far.”

Alexander glanced back to the town behind him, the house they had been occupied clear against the background with a pillar of smoke emanating from the chimney, before he grimaced and returned his gaze to John. He knew there was no arguing with the man once he had decided to do something. “Fine, then I’m coming with you. Buddy up, like Thomas was going on about.”

John didn’t look too happy about that, but didn’t stop Alexander from following him, and together, the two walked along the road in silence, save for the shuffling off their boots over the snow and pavement. Either side of the road was lined with a clearcut where the trees had recently been cleared, soon sloping upwards into sharp hills.

Sure enough, what John had seen  _ had _ been a gas station: Orca Gas, to be precise. Not only that, but it seemed to have a sizable convenience store attached, to which John grinned and said, “Well, maybe we can pick up something more appetizing for lunch.” Alexander didn’t share that half-cheerful sentiment, but after a few hard yanks on the front doors to dislodge them from the thick ice that had formed around the latch, he was inside.

Keyword “he,” because while it had been John’s idea  _ in the goddamn first place _ to walk over here, the other man leaned away from the doors for a moment and muttered, “I wonder what’s up that way...” When Alexander huffed and spread his arms in disbelief at John’s actions, John simply waved him off and snapped, “Looks like a path continues on around and up the hill. I’m gonna check it out -- I’ll just be a second. You go inside.”

Alexander didn’t have the energy to keep arguing, and stomped inside to escape the bitterly cold wind that was slowly beginning to pick up outside. If John wanted to go get himself eaten by wolves or trapped suffocating in a snowbank, that was his choice. If nothing else, Alexander felt slightly less terrible about looting from a convenience store. It was more akin to shopping than it was to going through someone’s personal belongings, and to make the feeling complete, he even picked up a plastic shopping basket.

To his disappointment, the alcohol they desperately would have enjoyed was locked away in a case, and he wasn’t about to go smashing through the glass to get at it. Hell, he had already snapped at John for alleged daytime drinking, maybe it  _ wasn’t _ the best idea to encourage it -- on the other hand, if there was anytime to get a little something to take the edge off, a possible apocalypse wasn’t a bad choice, to the point where he was almost considering just going for it. What stopped him in his tracks was when John’s words rang in his ears once more: “Unlike  _ some people, _ I don’t turn to smoking and alcohol and whatever other drugs I can get my hands on to make myself feel better.”

With a grimace, Alexander returned to poking through the rest of the store.

Despite the cold, on some level he was disappointed to find the slushy machine empty, but at least with how cold it was indoors (the indoor temperature seemed to be hovering just above freezing, but the outdoors showed on sign of melting), the few perishables and refrigerated items in the store were hanging in there. He had no idea what Thomas had got his hands on, but he hadn’t seen John carrying much, so he grabbed a little bit of everything at random. First into the basket were ketchup chips, simply because he had never in his  _ life _ heard of ketchup flavored chips and had to share his findings with the others. More canned goods: peaches, pork n’ beans. Oysters crackers. Pot macaroni, anything that could be cooked over a fire. Hand sanitizer, hand warmers, moist towelettes, and eyedrops -- things he thought would be helpful, or things he distinctly recalled being a godsend while deployed (the sand and dirt rubbed your eyes raw without something to help clean up). And finally, a pack of coffee, plus a single candy bar for himself.

It was enough for now. If they needed more, the store was only a short walk away. He dumped the contents of his cart into his backpack and zipped it up.

John caught him while Alexander was picking over the community fliers stuck to a corkboard by the cash register. For such a tiny town, they certainly had a lot going on. “Thompson’s Crossroads Bingo” was front and center, and he found a tourist destination flier for lakefront cabins. That, and hiking trails and group expeditions. As much as Alexander was criticizing the town for the shoddy state he had found it in, surely it had been a nicer place before everything.

John startled him out of his musings by pushing the door open with his shoulder, waving something in one hand and babbling in such a way Alexander actually had to snap at him and tell him to start over before he started making any real sense. “I went up the hill and there’s a pavilion area, and a park office. Apparently mountain climbing is huge in this area, so-” Alexander finally reached out to grab John by his wrists to still him and snatch the paper out of his hand, to his surprise finding it was a  _ map _ . A foldable booklet that spread out into a proper map, to be precise. “It’s a hiker’s guide to Great Bear, and- well, it’s pretty outdated- but it’s a map! And look-” he pointed to a line connecting Milton to another labeled region. “All we have to do is follow the highway out of here, and there’s another town just a few hour’s walk away at most!”

John grabbed Alexander by the shoulders, eyes glittering. “We’re not nearly screwed as we thought we were! Raise a glass in toast and fucking cheers, because we may just have a chance at getting out of here!”

Alexander sure hoped John was right, and raised his free hand in a mock toast in return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They're stuck at that awkward stage of "apocalypse" where *technically,* they would absolutely die if they didn't break into homes or loot, and there's no one else around who's going to suffer if they do just that, but at the same time, it doesn't feel like an apocalypse. It's only been a few days, and they have heat, food, and water. Who knows for how long they'll be able to last on what they have, but just at his moment, it feels wrong stealing from others, because if they were forced to go without it, they could scrape by for a bit (sure, they already took over someone else's home, but that's beside the point).
> 
> In any case, after a bit of a hiatus, I'm back to writing for this story! Excitingly enough, I also actually went through and planned things out chapter-by-chapter as well. In total, at the moment, we're sitting at somewhere around 16 total chapters, but that may be extended or reduced as I write. Next chapter will be from Thomas' point of view!


	8. Mountain Parkway

As a child, Thomas had loved playing outside and pretending he was a survivalist. He would make pine needle tea and sit in the woods behind his house by a little campfire (one his mother most certainly didn’t want a pre-teen keeping an eye one, much less without her knowledge), imagining that he was a rugged wilderness survivor hunting for his next meal and weathering the elements.

Now, he was starting to realize what a shitty fantasy that was. He certainly adored camping...but those sentiments were tied to a fun,  _ consensual _ choice to go on a trip to the woods, preferably when it wasn’t below zero outside. He was starting to decide he wasn’t a fan of true survival, not at all (“true survival,” he said, like they weren’t hiding in someone’s home rather than being trapped out in the snow...).

He was frustrated. He was scared. He had never in a million goddamn years ever thought that this would happen to him! All those fantasies of being a hero and surviving some- some  _ zombie apocalypse _ by breaking into houses with a bat, all of those were quickly wiped dead. Nope, no, he truly preferred his calm office job, and would love to return to that.

What houses were still standing and had been recently occupied often had the marks of someone leaving in a hurry. Chairs tipped over, papers loose on the table. Food grabbed from the cupboards, and warm clothes from the closet. No one had expected the power to blow  _ and _ every generator in town to break, he assumed, and weren’t they in the middle of a cold snap? The residents had obviously grabbed blankets and gone to weather things with others.

And that was how they had died.

Not everything was gone; the previous occupants had grabbed a backpack of things quickly and left, though he noted that even the houses with fireplaces keeping them warm had been abandoned. Maybe to conserve firewood? Why else would they walk to their demise?

He found more clothes, but puffy jackets didn’t do well when crammed into his bag, so he picked through things that looked roughly the sizes of the others (they seemed to vary quite a bit in height, with him being on the tall side and James on the small side, and Alexander and John sitting in the middle) and set them by the entrance of each house. Anything small and useful, he took, and decidedly didn’t think about the circumstances surrounding his breaking and entering, and subsequent stealing. They already had a first aid kit, but he grabbed more antibiotics and painkillers just in case. Water purification tablets -- he wasn’t sure how much he trusted boiling snow. A hunting knife. Spray paint. A compass. More matches for the fire, and a small pocket set of tools like a screwdriver and mini measuring tape.

He hesitated upon seeing a bulky storm lantern -- weren’t camping lamps electric? The solar flare would have rendered all of those inoperable -- only to find, much to his surprise, that it was a kerosene lamp. Oil-powered (and more importantly, recently refilled), and it was built of sturdy metal and glass. It had a handle, but he didn’t want to test his luck by trying to tie it to the outside of his bag if he didn’t need to, so he instead cleared a space to set it into his backpack.

At some point, if they loaded up on enough nice winter gear, they were really just hiking instead of desperately trying to survive a cold snap in the Canadian wilderness, right? That thought made him feel better about their odds, although not so much about the whole situation.

When he stepped out of the last house on that street, he didn’t see or hear John and Alexander anywhere outside. That didn’t really surprise him, as he hadn’t seen them since they split up (considering they were all dipping into houses, that was to be expected), and after a short pause as he debated what to do, he finally decided to turn and head back to the house. He wanted to check on Jemmy, and if the others were already back, they could figure out something from there.

He stomped hard against the floorboards of the porch to shake off some snow -- the vibration went right from his legs to his ribs and he winced -- before stepping inside. James had dragged a rocking chair over by the fireplace, or as close as he could get without sweating from the heat (what a funny thought when it was below freezing outside). They had pushed back the mattresses on the floor to make more space in front of the fireplace while everyone was suiting up to face the outdoors, so he had more room to do as he needed.

It looked like James had already washed and put away their dishes, and had put another pot of snow up by the fire to melt, sitting down to keep an eye on it. If he had been lost in thought before Thomas returned, he had clearly been snapped back to reality with Thomas’ boisterous entrance, and glanced over to face Thomas. “You’re the first one back.” Well, that answered that much, but Thomas still went over to sit down on the floor beside the fireplace (and by extension, James). He even took the opportunity to drop his boots down by the fire, even if they were only a bit wet -- his toes were still the sort of cold where they hadn’t yet gone totally numb, and he’d rather bite the bullet and stick them in a fire while he had the chance.

James shifted in his seat, awkwardly tapping his fingers against the arm of the chair before softly asking, “Did...any chance you found some kind of crutches?”

Thomas frowned. He hadn’t explicitly said he would be looking for anything of that sort, but he had been keeping an eye out. James could clearly move around a bit in the house if he needed to, where there were walls to lean against and solid ground. But while he and Thomas had been able to struggle through the snow together, he was worried that that had aggravated James’ injury more, and was scared of making things worse. Unzipping his jacket, Thomas admitted, “No. I didn’t find anything that would really work.” A cane was the best he had seen, but then again, he had only searched part of the town. Maybe someone else had found the same…?

An injured ankle wasn’t the end of the line. James could still put light pressure on his wound, it seemed, and whether it was truly broken or sprained, nothing had broken through the skin. Boots that kept the injury well wrapped and supported, plus something to support himself with, had to be enough for him to walk on. Three grown men could lend a shoulder to the fourth if need be.

He let his head fall into his hands. “I’ll figure something out for you. Don’t worry.” James didn’t reply, instead picking up the fire poker and pulling one of the logs in the fireplace aside to better situate it over what had already burned. Thomas furrowed his brow and reached out to touch James’ knee, the room silent save for the soft crunch of ash and char against the metal fire poker.

“We’re back!” John called in an almost sing-song voice, seemingly completely oblivious to James’ predicament as he threw open the door and skipped inside. Thomas made a point of glaring over his shoulder, but that was similarly missed, or perhaps deliberately ignored.

Still, if he was so happy about something despite their situation, there had to be a reason-

Alexander stomped in after John, but despite his heavy step, was chattering excitedly all the same. “We’ve got some great news! John and I were outside of town-”

“You guys  _ specifically _ agreed to stay within the town’s borders!” James interjected.

Alexander waved that comment off with, “It was John’s idea, and I didn’t want to let him go alone, yeah?” Talk about taking responsibility. Thomas crossed his arms, impatiently waiting for Alexander to spill whatever he was alluding to as Alexander went about dumping his backpack to the ground. “Anyways, we were outside of town -- found a gas station and I grabbed some shit for us -- and get this, John noticed a park just up the hill. All buried in snow, of course.”

John then picked up the story, explaining, “There wasn’t much there, just some picnic spots and such, but I saw a park office and stepped inside. Just a little shack with some papers and a wood stove, but I was poking around and found... _ this!” _ Dramatically, he whipped out a folded booklet.

It was a map. Like the sort you’d have folded a dozen times and stuffed in the glove compartment of a car. Thomas suppressed a grimace as he realized that while they had been rather preoccupied with survival, checking cars for the express purpose of finding maps wasn’t a bad idea. Sure, most people just used their phone or a GPS these days, but he doubted there was much reception in bumfuck-nowhere-ville, Great Bear. Still, he wasn’t about to get pissy over the fact that he hadn’t thought to look for a map so long as they had one in the first place, and John continued on, saying, “So, you can see where we are up in Milton.” To provide a visual, he unfolded the map and turned it to face the others. “We would have crashed around here...” He pointed to a point north of the town. “The main street in town seems to be connected to a longer road that stretches northward more, going around a river valley and spirling off into the wilderness. Blackrock Federal Penitentiary is out that way, as well -- that is to say, most of Great Bear’s government presence, because the rest of this place isn’t very settled, to say the least.”

“So...we hike out to the local prison?” James asked, and Thomas didn’t miss the way he scrunched up his nose as he spoke.

“Well, that’s the problem,” John winced, sucking in a sigh through his teeth. “From what I know, that prison and the bases around it have been shutting down, sending prisoners off to the mainland, so there may not be much left to find there. Not only that, but I’m just gonna toss this out there: it’s not a great idea to try to make it to Blackrock. It’s basically inaccessible by road during poor weather in the colder months. There’s a mountain range between there and here, and I can guarantee the roads are buried under six feet of snow. We’d never be able to make it there before freezing to death. And if we did, where would we be, exactly…? Well, miles away from the coast, in an even  _ more _ remote location, in a prison used to keep violent offenders locked away.”

Alexander must have caught on to Thomas’ growing worry, because he jumped in to say, “Hang on, hang on, there’s a ‘but’ in there that John hasn’t mentioned yet.”

“Yeah- I...I’m getting to that, thanks,” John muttered, but pointed to a point on the opposite end of the map. “We have no idea the state of the rest of the world, so right now, we can’t bank on magically stumbling on rescue. Finding other survivors is going to be our best bet. Follow Milton’s main street the other direction...” he dragged his finger along the paper, “And you find a highway tunnel.”

“What’s that?” Thomas asked, brow furrowed. The first thing that came to mind from “highway tunnel” were the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnels -- he always had to take it when he drove from Albemarle to Virginia Beach for the day. It was a massive tunnel that went underneath the Hampton Roads harbor, literally crossing underwater so that ships could go by overhead. There was another tunnel, too, crossing the Chesapeake Bay and connecting Virginia’s coast with Delmarva. But they were in the mountains, a good distance from the coast, so…?

“It goes underneath the mountains where constructing highways and bridges could otherwise be impossible. This one connects Milton to a neighboring region, called Pleasant Valley. Great Bear has one major highway along the coast, wrapping along the inlet and bay around the side of the island nearer to international waters. That’s the only one I’ve seen -- I mean, I fly a float plane, so I’ve set clients down on the coast before. Then you have the trans-island railway line, which runs through Great Bear parallel to the highway, but further north. And,  _ finally _ , you have us -- further north than that, with the dinky little Mountain Parkway, running up through the mountains. That’s what connects the federal prison to us here in Milton…”

Thomas clambered to his feet, moving to take the map from John and look it over himself while the other man rambled on. True to John’s word, Thomas could trace the parkway across a good portion of the map. He started with Milton, then headed along what must have been the tunnel, then squinted to read the little labels on the landmarks in Pleasant Valley.

_ Oh! _

“There’s another town just a few miles down the road,” Thomas breathed.  _ Thompson’s Crossroads. _ Didn’t seem to be as big as Milton, but…well, Milton wasn’t very populated these days, as awful a thought as it was to consider.

“Kilometers,” John corrected him. “The map’s in metric.”

“John nit-picking aside,” Alexander jumped in, “That’s what we found! And while we were out in the town proper earlier, John and I both did our share of picking through houses. We could go through all the clothing we found, put together supplies, and take the hike. It’s a helluva lot more survivable than going out into the fucking wilderness hoping we stumble upon a prison, in any case.”

Thomas glanced back over to James, who at some point during their conversation had given up messing with the fireplace and set the poker back in its place beside the chair. Even a few miles would be a lot. He  _ had _ to figure out something for James. “Did either of you find crutches for James?”

Alexander shook his head, and John was left thinking, finally sighing and shaking his head. Thomas wilted as James’ mouth tightened; James seemed to be very intentionally looking away from the rest of them. Trying to ignore the bad taste filling his mouth, Thomas began fumbling with his jacket zipper. “How far out of town is the tunnel? We should go check it out, then go from there.” At least since the tunnel was by definition enclosed, it wouldn’t be thick with snow and instead would be a straight shot on pavement -- that’d make it easier for James to hobble with them.

“Give us a minute to warm up,” Alexander said. “God, of all the places we had to be stranded, why couldn’t it have been on a tropical island!?”

Thomas did his best to suppress his annoyance at Alexander’s rambling (though honestly, Alexander seemed to be horrifically unfit for below-freezing temperatures, so he couldn’t blame the guy for whining) and glanced over to his friend, who had miserably pulled his knees up to his chest.

He finally reached out to squeeze James’ shoulder. His friend returned with a look that wasn’t quite a smile, but was slightly less despairing than earlier.

Well, if that was all James had to give, he’d take it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was originally going to be a bit longer, but I decided to split it in half, so the next chapter will be narrated by Thomas as well!


	9. Rockfall

Thomas kept an ear out while they walked -- for wolves, survivors, or whatever else they could possibly run into. He only picked up on the soft _thwomp_ as snow slipped off of bare branches; anything else was nearly certainly imagined (or at least he was going to keep telling himself that), though he couldn’t help but be a bit paranoid that they would run into something.

Because if one of them was taken down for good, he didn’t have much faith that the rest of them would be able to make it much farther.

Maybe he was just being pessimistic, though. Sure, against all odds a large-scale natural disaster had occurred right as they were flying over the Canadian wilderness, and sure, that had dropped them in what was probably a _literal_ ghost town considering the entire population had been wiped out. But good luck always followed a string of bad luck, right? And this was their good luck: an enclosed highway tunnel that would take them straight to-

“This is...is this supposed to be it?” Alexander stammered, almost disbelieving; he took a few shaky steps forward, as if hoping he was simply standing at the wrong angle the whole time and it would only take a few steps to reveal what they had been looking for.

John took a more aggressive approach, kicking up a small shower of loose snow from the ground. It didn’t succeed in much beyond leaving the toe of his boot with a new layer of white powder caked on. “Dammit! Of course this would happen!”

The tunnel was blocked.

The brick and steel tunnel lining, the stones piled high above it, and the snow that had accumulated on top that had all collapsed inwards, leaving nothing but a sharp, rocky slope and a landslide-blocked tunnel in its wake.

John fisted his fingers to his hair, as if having to physically restrain himself from trying to dig out the collapsed tunnel with his own bare hands. “Isn’t that just fantastic! Great Bear’s infrastructure’s been failing for years; place just doesn’t have the money or resources to get it fixed. Guess between shoddy maintenance and fucking _earthquakes_ , half the mountainsides have been collapsing as of late!”

Thomas didn’t have anything to say. Or rather, he couldn’t say anything even if he wanted to; it felt as though his throat were closing up on him, heartbeat stuttering.

Of course this would have happened. They couldn’t even climb up the hillside and try to walk across the landscape -- it would be too difficult to navigate the mountainous terrain just based on a paper road map, hoping that they’d find themselves out on the other side of where the tunnel exited the mountainside.

So...what now? Try walking the other direction through the mountains and hope that they’d find a way out before freezing to death? Against all odds attempt to weather the next half a year’s worth of winter on their limited supplies and pray someone would come looking for survivors?

Thomas buried his face into his gloved hands, trying to hold himself in that warmth for just a moment as he stifled tears. He wasn’t the kind of person to ever cry, but emotional pain and hopelessness had a way of jutting in and leaving his throat hitching and burning. What the _fuck_?!

“Fuckin’ great,” he finally snapped, turning on his heel to face away from the rockslide. “Alright y’all, guess we oughta just pack it up,” he spat, throwing his hands up in defeat. “Suppose we either get to sit here and hope there’s a warm week before winter sets in, or we can go galavanting around in the mountains. Couldn’t be better! This is exactly what I was hoping would happen when we were sent out to...to check out all the wonders Great Bear’s industry and natural resources had to offer!” It _was_ only fall -- it had been a cold snap that had brought the freezing temperatures and awful weather to Great Bear this early in the year. But even if they tried to wait it out, who was to say that the weather would improve at all before they instead slipped into winter?

“Hey, man, don’t forget the rest of us are stuck here too,” John said, crossing his arms with a glare. “Yes, it sucks. But it sucks for all of us, y’know?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Thomas muttered, starting to walk back towards town. “Might as well start bringing any supplies we found earlier back to the house. Looks like we’ll be here longer than expected, or at least have a longer trek wherever the fuck we end up going from here.”

Behind him, he heard Alexander softly sigh, “Yeah...”

* * *

Thomas walked back into town, then down the main street, but when he found himself lingering by the path leading up to the porch of the house they’d set themselves up in, he instead turned and continued walking. He didn’t want to be the one to break the news to James, as quite frankly he was still coming to terms with the sudden wrench in their plans himself. And maybe that was selfish and petty, but at the moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care.

So, off he continued, passing by their house and crossing over to the other end of the town. Well, “end” wasn’t really accurate, since the house they had commandeered was one of the last real buildings on this side of town. He was simply...crossing out of town. He had been hearing rushing water in the background for their entire stay, but it wasn’t until he continued along through a curve in the road that the cliff walls lining the town gave way to show a waterfall that spewed into a small river that continued on underneath the bridge Thomas was standing on.

Sheets of ice had formed all across the cliffs surrounding the waterfall where stray droplets had fallen onto the rocks, though anything open to the sky was blanketed with snowfall anyways.

In a funny sort of way, the sound of the water -- more like rushing _noise,_ if he needed a better descriptor, since up close it was so much louder -- was comforting. Even as the cold seeped into his shoes and made his toes sting, and the wind was beginning to pick up, it felt so much better to drown out everything around him. Just focusing on the water spattering among the rocks, rather than allowing his anxieties to bubble up and leave him a shaking mess on the ground. Using his sleeve -- his coat wasn’t exactly waterproof, but his gloves most certainly weren’t -- he wiped away the snow from a section of the bridge railing and leaned against it with a sigh.

He was scared.

He didn’t know what to do.

And he didn’t know where to go.

They were stuck in an awful situation and he was floundering for it, with no way to escape and no way to give them a leg up. Their best shot at finding other _living_ people had been crushed, and with no good alternative yet on the books, they were lost and unsure of where to go.

What now? What the fuck else were they going to do?

He had read before about people finding corpses come springtime, bodies preserved beneath the snow for months upon months and only emerging as the ice melted. In a place like Great Bear, so unpopulated, so empty, he almost doubted their remains would ever be found so far out in the mountains if they left the confines of the now-dead town of Milton.

He groaned and dragged a hand along his face, grimacing at the feeling of wet fabric against his nose. He was a winter person, but in the sense that he was built to sit inside with a good book while the snow fell outside and there was a fire going a few feet away. A _gas_ fireplace, mind you. Not a wood fire being constantly fed and cleaned while serving as the only thing standing between him and a cold, frozen death.

He fisted his hand in his hair, using his other to prop himself up against the railing. Thomas wanted to pretend that he could find the beauty in the mundane, but there really wasn’t any upside to this insane natural disaster. He certainly didn’t count bullshit like “new experiences” and “nice views” as anything more than a mild anesthetic from the pain of everything else.

The wind picked up, pushing his gaze away from the waterfall and down the road the other way. The town stopped abruptly before the bridge, but there were a few vehicles stuck in the snow along the road beyond -- abandoned, of course.

As far as he was concerned, there was nothing much they’d reach out in that direction. Even if at some point the road over that way looped around and connected to a more populated part of the island, rather than only really leading back towards the federal penitentiary, it would be too long a walk. Still, he wondered…

Thomas pulled back from the railing, brushing some of the snow from his sleeves as he walked. He wasn’t honestly expecting to find anything, but-

Well, he’d be damned: there was a church. Maybe he shouldn’t have been too surprised; really, from growing up in the south, there was a church (or twenty) in every county and at least a handful in each town. A remote town turning to faith didn’t seem too out of line.

Chancing one last glance over his shoulder, Thomas shrugged and trudged over, knocking his boots against the wall to kick off some of the snow compacted against the soles before stepping inside.

Like everywhere else, the church was abandoned. Not that he had been expecting anything different, but...well, he had been hoping, in a way, that maybe someone had been hiding just outside of town and had been spared against all odds. Seeing as that wasn’t the case, though, and they were still as alone as ever, he had no choice but to bury his thoughts and step inside.

The interior of the church was a few degrees warmer than the surrounding outdoors, but Thomas couldn’t help but notice a distinct draft, even if he couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from. The church was tiny, and cramped -- the door opened directly into the main service space, a handful of pews on either side of a narrow walkway leading right up to a low stage containing a piano (one that was missing a few keys, he noticed), a table with a few boxes tucked underneath it, and a pulpit. Everything was in that perfect stage of disrepair where he wasn’t sure whether the space was genuinely abandoned or simply falling apart due to a lack of funds and interest.

Though obviously nowadays it’d classify as “abandoned” by default, he supposed.

Thomas wasn’t sure if he considered himself religious; even if he had been raised more traditionally, he preferred the idea of organized religion over true belief in miracles and acts of God over science. Despite not being very close to Alexander, he had once overheard the man describing the concept of God as painful, knowing that such a being had completely disgraced them and it was now up to them to write their own deliverances. He couldn’t recall the context of that, doubted it was a conversation he was really taking part in (he and his coworker had never really been on casual speaking terms, had they?), but right about now, he couldn’t help but agree. It definitely fucking sucked to be stranded as they were, and even that was an understatement.

He sighed, pausing in the end of the aisle, hands shoved in his pockets. What was he even looking for? It was a church. They weren’t going to have much beyond some bibles and books of hymns.

He stepped up onto the stage, picking up a small prayer book sitting on a table at the back of the stage and flipping it over in his hands a few times before setting it down. He raised an eyebrow as his gaze caught on a paper taped up just above the table, squinting to read it. He had left his glasses back in the house, knowing that they’d inevitably get plastered with stray flecks of snow the moment he stepped outside, and rubbing his gloves over the lenses would only make things worse.

It was advertising service times, stating that in order to reach more people regionally, they had moved all services to Skype. There was a time and number to dial in through below. A town so small and crumbling even their pastor had been withdrawn by the Archdiocese. In a way, he was one of the only people to have gotten out; and just in the nick of time, too. Below the times for the services was a note about other activities such as Latin lessons, and then other community activities.

He couldn’t help but sigh as he saw a listing for Scouts Canada. How many children had died in this town?

Heart heavy for people he didn’t even know, Thomas simply dropped down to the ground beside the table, staring blankly out across the tiny hall. Who would be thinking of them? Concerned news reporters lumping every death into the statistics, no doubt, assuming only parts of the world had been impacted by the flare. People didn’t often get _out_ of small, poor towns -- how much family would be waiting in another part of Canada with baited breath for a relative who was already deceased?

Who would be thinking of _him?_ Maybe Washington would take pause upon realizing he was likely out three employees. After all, they had been on a tight schedule; it wouldn’t take more than some simple math to count back the hours and realize they would have been in the air at that time. If he wasn’t clearly alive and well, he wouldn’t have believed that he, James, Alexander, and John had all survived either. Thomas supposed he may have mentioned in passing to some of his extended family before that he was going to Canada for work, but how long would it take for them to put two and two together?

Another flush of that draft hit him, and he tipped his head back, searching for the source, before his shoulders slumped and he started tapping against his knee. They weren’t in a good position; that was for sure. He just felt...hopeless. Like they had used up all their good luck on the whole “surviving a plane crash” part that they were constantly screwed over when it came to the “surviving everything else” part.

He turned to glance back at that note with the Skype times on it, again seeing the Scouts Canada listing.

Well. If fate was gonna be a bitch about it, he’d just have to take matters into his own hands. He knew the basics of wilderness first aid from boy scouts; he’d patch Jemmy up best they could, then plot out a route to start hiking. Throw their food into a couple backpacks, bundle up in as many layers as they could manage, and get to walking. John clearly wasn’t thrilled with the situation either, but he seemed to be a strong and experienced man, and Thomas had few doubts he’d give up. Then, despite Alexander’s bitching, he was starting to see a side to his coworker he had never known before -- the sort who wasn’t just a bug in his hair, a nuisance who never gave up and never gave in, but a fighter one who saw what the world had in store for him and spat in its face.

And James...well, as long as his friend was okay, he too could keep up the fight.

They’d survive.

...He hoped.

* * *

When the cold grew too much to handle and he wanted nothing more than to change out of his damp boots for a bit, Thomas picked himself up off of the floor and trudged back to the house. His feet had reached that lovely stage of numb where he could no longer feel his toes, and he stumbled through an unexpectedly deep bank of snow near the bridge. As he once again passed the waterfall, the rush of water did well to drown out any other noises, though he could have sworn he could pick out the distant howl of wolves.

He wasn’t positive how much time had passed, and with the ever-present cold, the chills that made him shudder and wince as he walked weren’t the most reliable indicator. He clearly hadn’t been gone so long that the others were genuinely concerned for his wellbeing, but when he walked back inside of the house they’d commandeered, three sets of eyes snapped over to meet his as soon as he came into the living room.

He gnawed at the inside of his cheek as the others looked him over, a rush of shame hitting him square in the chest at the realization that he had really just run off to have an emotional crisis while everyone else was at least doing something productive. And yet, when he opened his mouth to say _something-_ whether it would be an apology or a hasty explanation in his own defense had yet to be determined- John cut him off with a surprisingly upbeat, “Thomas! Great you’re back, we have news. _Good_ news, actually, as much of a goddamn surprise as that is.”

Thomas’ brow furrowed, but he nodded and walked over. James was still in a chair by the fire; his and his friend’s mattress had been pushed against the wall beyond the fireplace to make space for supplies that had been spread out across the floor. Alexander and John’s mattress had only been pushed back by two or so feet, to allow more space immediately in front of the fire, though Thomas noted that Alexander had elected to sit on the floor nearer to the fireplace instead, the poker laying near his crossed legs. Whether that was because the man was still making a problem out of being near the guy who was apparently his ex, or if it was because he was cold, Thomas didn’t know, nor did he particularly care. At the moment, most of his focus was solidly on getting out of his damp clothing; he’d at least bothered to kick some of the snow off at the door that had become caked in the tread of his boots.

Apparently realizing that there was a non-zero chance that he would be wacked in the face with a cold jacket, Alexander scooted back from where he sat, and Thomas went about unlacing his boots and leaving them by the fireplace, soon followed by his jacket, gloves, and socks. He hadn’t been out long enough for anything to be truly soaked, fortunately, though snow had a way of weaseling into the tiniest gaps in clothing. There was a moment of general silence (save for the crackle of the fire itself, he supposed) as he went about making sure nothing was likely to actually start smoking, and he couldn’t help but awkwardly hum, “So, what’s the big reveal…?”

“John has a death wish,” Alexander murmured in reply, gaze solidly locked onto the ground and eyes dull. Thomas’ focus then jumped over to John, who had shot Alexander a glare before holding up a folded paper map -- the hiker’s guide to Great Bear that they had been looking through earlier.

“Great Bear isn’t known for much in the way of industry,” John began. Thomas raised an eyebrow, waiting to see where this all was going. “There’s fishery, logging...natural resources, really. Forests, lakes, picturesque scenery. So...what does it excel in? _Tourism,_ naturally _._ This is a fucking hiker’s guide, and Great Bear is renowned for its challenging summit climbs, caverns, and trails. The roads may be a bust, and we already established that in these conditions, aimlessly wandering in the general direction of where we want to go would be a fool’s errand at best. But following a hiking trail...well, those have difficulty ratings, expected walking times, listed hazards. It might be doable.”

Keyword _might_.

Thomas turned back to James, concern now chewing at him. “We still don’t have any real crutches for you. Not that they’d work well in the snow anyways.”

James’ quiet sigh of agreement made his heart sink. Even if he had been the one to state it, his friend’s immediate acceptance only served to drive the point home.

“We may have found something to help on that end, too,” John cut in. “I’m not exactly a medical professional, but I can recognize parts of a first aid kit. Any chance you know how to use a SAM splint?”

Thomas was fully aware that his obvious look of confusion would do little to settle anyone’s nerves. John leaned over, picking through the neatly organized supplies they had laid out on the floor. Thomas knew that couldn’t be all they had found (though with only two men working to bring things back to the house he couldn’t fault them), but it was still a fair bit. They’d need to figure out what clothing fit and what didn’t, and what supplies would be easiest to carry, but for now they had at least had the place of mind to organize things into general piles. After a moment of rooting for his prize, John held up a folded, blue and orange piece of...stiff fabric, or foam, perhaps. Thomas looked it over, trying to recall if he had seen it before, then blinked as John unrolled it.

Thomas would consider himself an outdoorsy sort of man, and while his days of boy scouts were _years_ behind him, the sight tugged at a memory. “Wait. No, I- I do. Recognize that, I mean.” From learning first aid and hiking safety.

An indignant squawk was forced from his throat when John spiked it up at him. Fortunately, seeing as he had unrolled it, it was hardly as dangerous; Thomas easily caught it and tentatively ran it between his fingers. It was an emergency splint made from a padded, flexible aluminum. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it was reusable, would fit around any bandages, socks, or boot, and was about all they had at the moment while lacking anything better in the way of medical equipment.

Fashion a walking stick, offer a hand for support, and Jemmy may very well have a chance at hiking out of there with the rest of them. The only further concern was any pain from the action, and...well, with their limited options, it seemed the best response to that was to pop a few Tylenol and reassure him that in a few minutes the cold would freeze his pain into numbness anyways.

Not the _best_ outcome, but- oh, what the hell. It wasn’t like _crashing into the Canadian wilderness_ was anywhere _near_ “good,” let alone “great” or “best” on the scale of “ass-fucked with the devil’s pitchfork, post-Hell-freezing-over, apparently” to “taking an obligation-free day off and sleeping in, at home, under a pile of cozy blankets.” If they were lucky, James’ injuries weren’t as bad as they seemed at first glance, and when their only options were “drag him along and hope his ankle isn’t too fucked up forever more” or “leave him behind,” there really was no question which one they were going to pick.

He dragged a hand over his face, stifling a groan. The last few days had not been kind to any of them, that was for sure. “So you have an idea of our course?”

John nodded, though his mouth seemed to crook down in worry. “I...do. Said only other ways out of here either require trudging through the muskeg or following the rail line to the highway, though. But while neither’s great, you can bet the second’s preferable.”

Thomas sat down on the floor -- beside James. It would be awkward to sit down on John and Alexander’s mattress, and sitting near Alexander was something he’d normally avoid out of preference -- and currently, Alexander seemed to be in a particularly poor mood (not that Thomas could blame him), so sitting next to the person whose presence he most preferred it was. Faintly allowing his cheek to rest against one of the wooden slats making up the armrest of James’ chair, he just murmured, “Alright. Guess we’ll finish packing up what supplies we can gather and see about heading out tomorrow. Here’s to hoping the weather’s nice.” He tugged his knees up closer to his chest. “I’m gonna let my stuff dry for a minute. We can head back out to move more up here after.”

Alexander was the only one to speak up, answering with a flat, “Sounds good.” And soon enough, the noise surrounding them had once again dulled to nothing but the faint cracking of the fireplace.

Thomas started as he felt James’ hand brush against his hair. Right, he had been leaning up against the armrest.

He shifted and pulled away, instead propping his chin up on the palm of his hand, elbow pressing into his thigh, and gaze drifting with the softly-shifting flames of the fireplace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thomas is having a sudden emotional crisis, where everything hits at once and he's left floundering. Alexander is similarly unwell, but he's 1) not the narrator of this chapter and 2) has been having a continual crisis this entire time, so it's okay.
> 
> Anywho. I didn't mean for all my fics to stall with updates; mental health issues and the general workload of my classes has beaten me down. But my fics aren't abandoned! Just rather slow to update.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments make my day -- I love seeing what y'all have to say, and responding to them in kind!
> 
> If you have art requests, questions, prompts, or just wanna chat with me, find me on [this account](https://beeshavethrees.tumblr.com)! I'm always happy to talk and interact with others.
> 
> Anyways, this is something of a passion fic that I'm just writing for fun. It's set in the universe of The Long Dark (a winter survival horror game set in Canada), and while I will borrow some elements from the story mode of the game, for the most part, this is an open-world survival story. Funnily enough, because of all the little details like flight times and information on aircraft, this might be my most-researched fanfic to date.
> 
> I just wanted to write a story where everyone is at their breaking points, and where they have nothing but each other. A story where the best anyone can do is find comfort in a lover and hope they'll make it to the next day.
> 
> Anyways, hope y'all can enjoy, and I hope to update more in the future! :)


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